


Speaking In Silences

by Aelys_Althea



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Ableism, Canon Divergence - Binghamton Game, Canon-Typical Violence, Found Family, Gen, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Injury Recovery, M/M, People are generally mean to each other but these are the Foxes so unsurprising, Selectively mute, Sign Language, mute characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27928243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelys_Althea/pseuds/Aelys_Althea
Summary: It had been months since Binghamton's game and the world hadn't readjusted itself. It still stood as tipped askew as Andrew had always known it to be, yet since that game it had been worse. It was so askew that he could barely keep his feet.Neil was gone. Not dead, Andrew knew he wasn't dead, but gone. The worst part was that for once Andrew could do nothing to bring him back.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 69
Kudos: 330





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Please read the tags!!!!

The darkness of morning was almost complete blackness when Andrew woke. The kind of darkness that promised rather than defined the corners and edges of the houses across the road, that smothered the driveway into a smear of grey rather than the near-white that it was by day. The kind of darkness that, when stripped away, showed little of importance or novelty yet was oddly satisfying in its familiarity. In some ways it could even be comforting.

Except that it wasn't.

Taking a drag from his stump of a cigarette, Andrew wasn't comforted. Staring into the darkness, at the silent houses across the road, he wasn't intrigued by the unspoken promises of their blurred edges. Rather, Andrew stared and barely saw them at all. Last night had not been a night for sleeping, and the following day would be dull and thickened by inattention. Andrew knew. It had happened enough that he was familiar with the trend.

Though the heat wasn't intense, its persistence coddled the house, seeping through windows and warming the wooden floors. The step beneath Andrew hadn't chilled the night before and likely wouldn't the following night. Columbia had taken an unexpectedly warm turn that year. Uncomfortably warm.

Not that Andrew cared. He didn't find he cared for much of late, if he ever had. Not the holiday fever that had gripped and continued to hold Palmetto State in its grasp. Not Nicky's absence broken by frequent calls from the side of his offshore boyfriend. Not Kevin's grumbling that they could be practicing but weren't, or Aaron's silent distaste for their company when he could be chasing cheerleader tail, or the intermittent texts and calls from Coach to check in, to make sure they hadn't killed one another as he so often claimed was barely a terse word away.

Andrew didn't really care, and he didn't care that he didn't care. Nothing mattered since their exy season had ended, and it had little to do with the dissatisfying culmination of their season.

_'_ _An untimely withdrawal by Palmetto State University…'_

_'…_ _unfortunate, given their improvement out of sight this year…'_

_'…_ _but for the unavoidable loss of not one but two players…'_

Sports news headlines still cropped up intermittently, despite months of time and distance between the Binghamton incident and the end of the college year. Excitement and unsavoury thrill had faded into questions, speculations, and then to even less savoury considerations and accusations. As if the loss of a player so far into the season held greater significance and curiosity than the season itself and the culmination of the Ravens' success.

Perhaps it did. Perhaps it wasn't every day that the son of a crime lord was thrust in the limelight that he'd battled to hide himself from. Perhaps that fact was made more exciting by said son's subsequent disappearance and the abrupt execution of his father.

Eyes blindly staring into the darkness, Andrew raised the stub of his cigarette to his lips. The absence of a thick influx of tasteful smoke shook him briefly from his detachment and a glance found nothing left to burn. With a wordless huff through his nose, he flicked it to the deck and drew another from his pocket. Kevin would grumble and quiver at anything resembling chain smoking, but Kevin could go fuck himself. Not just because of the cigarettes and disdain either.

Not a word. Not a single word had been offered in the past months. Andrew didn't really expect any better, couldn't expect more, because expectation inevitably led to disappointment, but there was something there. Something very like expectation that kept him up at night and dragged him from bed in the morning to stare into the darkness as it slowly, slowly dissolved into the morning light. Something that all but whimpered with relief when a body wasn't found and a single note was delivered in its stead. Andrew had read that note only once. He hadn't needed more than that, hadn't needed to stare and stare at words written in unfamiliar print bearing little by way of explanation but enough comfort that the Foxes had been able to release their pent breath just a little.

The season had been lost but at least another player hadn't been taken with it. Not completely. There had simply been no follow up to enforce that feeble comfort.

Darkness faded into bleary pre-dawn, then gradually into a lazy morning. Grey sky would undoubtedly peel away into blue before the clock reached seven. Andrew stared unblinkingly as seven passed, then eight, then nine or thereabouts. Murmurs disrupted houses and cars puttered away from drives as the working week began once more.

Such a dull life. So unremarkable. So coddled and naïve.

The house behind Andrew woke even more slowly than those around them but wake it did. Aaron never slept late even when he could, and Kevin was inevitably drawn from his bed by the itch to run himself ragged on the court, an itch that apparently pervaded even his sleep. The clatter of plates in the kitchen was barely enough to draw Andrew's attention from the cigarette butt that had long since reached its end, and that attention went only so far as to nudge him into climbing to his feet. The smell of toast was a poor temptation but enough to have him moving.

Aaron was cradling a mug of coffee when Andrew stepped into the kitchen. The barest glance of acknowledgement was followed by disregard, and Andrew afforded him just as much, similarly bypassing him without a word. Kevin eyed him sidelong as he stopped before the toaster, pausing in where he was meticulously laying slices of avocado onto his bread.

Andrew didn't spare him a glance and he knew Kevin could feel the weight of its absence. That disregard was enough to have Kevin itching in a different kind of way; he could never stand to be ignored for long, even when demanding for more would achieve less than his silence. Andrew could feel the shifting discomfort as he slapped his own breakfast together and was already turning to the table when Kevin managed to conjure the willpower to speak.

"What time are we leaving today?"

Andrew didn't reply.

"Andrew?"

He took a bite of his sandwich. Across the table, Aaron rolled his eyes.

"Should I… call coach?"

"Twice in as many days?" Aaron asked. "Why don't you just stay in the dorms from now on? It'd be easier than having him come and pick you up every other day."

"It's not every other day," Kevin muttered, dropping heavily into his own seat. "Besides, Andrew doesn't want to stay on campus."

Andrew didn't spare the unvoiced accusation even a passing thought, and silence fell over the table. It was the sort of heavy silence that Nicky would have unerringly filled with chatter and questions that went unanswered. Aaron didn't take up his mantle and Andrew never would, so Kevin was left to sit alone in the discomfort that Andrew and Aaron bore with little concern.

Except on days when he couldn't help himself.

"Coach is headed out to see another possible striker tomorrow," Kevin said, head bowed to give far more attention to his breakfast than was necessary. "We have to be at the airport by eight for the flight."

Another unasked question hung in his words, but Andrew ignored that too, tearing a bite from his sandwich instead.

"I might… I mean, I could see if I could stay with him or Abby tonight to make it easier," Kevin continued. "Unless you're coming."

So desperate for attention. If Andrew had a heart, he'd cry pity.

Aaron snorted as the silence stretched between them, but Kevin persisted. "Andrew?"

Andrew spared him a bored glance that had Kevin shifting in his seat, picking at his breakfast. "Are you… will you be coming?"

Uncomfortable. Not scared but so uncomfortable. That discomfort mounted as Andrew stared at him, blinking slowly, until he finally turned away, leaving the question unanswered. So Kevin was all but quivering in his seat? It wasn't Andrew's problem. Just as the past months of similar discomfort weren't his problem but his fault. Because it was his fault. Undoubtedly. Though Andrew had made a promise to protect him, there were some things that he wouldn't deny.

Kevin's stupidity and selfishness, his silence when for once speaking up would have really mattered, had landed him where he was. Andrew shouldn't have to get him out of it. He wouldn't.

"Just call coach," Aaron eventually said. "Better luck with him."

"If I'm going to see a new striker," Kevin began.

"You don't need Andrew for that."

"But he should come along."

"He didn't last time."

"That was only a drive away."

"So?"

"So, this one will be overnight."

"So you can't last one night by yourself? Grow up, Kevin."

Kevin's fist thudded on the table but there was only a tinge of anger to his words when he spoke. "It's not like that."

"Right. Of course not. It's far more complex but we 'wouldn't understand'." Aaron rolled his eyes again as he tossed back his mug to finish the dregs of his coffee. Rising from his seat, he bypassed the sink on his way to the door. "Apologies clearly aren't working, Kevin, so you're either going to have to change your game or learn to sleep a night without Andrew in the next room."

The thud of Aaron's feet up the stairs echoed his words, emphasising them in a way that Andrew suspected Aaron entirely intended. Not that Andrew cared. Just as he didn't care for how Kevin shuffled in his seat as he picked despondently at the last of his breakfast, as he didn't care that Aaron and Kevin had spoken of him as though he weren't in the room. Once it would have bothered him just enough to notice, but he simply didn't care anymore. Certainly not enough to verbalise discontent.

When was the last time Andrew had spoken? He couldn't recall.

"Andrew?"

Dusting his fingers of crumbs, Andrew spared Kevin another glance. Another slow blink.

Kevin's expression was heavy, all but sagging. "I don't know how many times I can say I'm sorry before you'll believe me. I truly am."

 _As if that counts for anything,_ Andrew could have said, but he didn't. He didn't do all that much speaking anymore. _As if that matters or could change the damage of what you've done_.

Whether it really could have changed anything didn't matter. Whether, if Andrew had known, he would have been able to do something, would have changed the course of events and protected what was his, didn't matter. What mattered was that he hadn't been given the chance to try. It didn't matter that Neil had him rescind his protection either; what mattered was that Andrew _hadn't tried_.

Rising from the table, Andrew took his plate to the sink. The running water didn't quite drown out Kevin's words as he continued. "Andrew, I don't know what else I can do. Do you want me to try and contact his uncle? I don't know how, but I could try. Do you want me to – to – I don't know, put out a public search party? I don't know if it would help but I could. Andrew just tell me…"

Andrew didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear excuses or offers. Call the uncle? The uncle who had left little more than a slip of a note with an explanation so vague it was barely an explanation at all? To put out a search party for someone who had been missing for months, someone for who the only evidence that remained was suggested to be in the company of relatives 'caring' for him?

They were pointless, worthless offerings, and Kevin likely knew it. He offered but it was all empty offerings because Andrew would never take him up on any of them. Why would he? Kevin had proved himself useless when it counted, and that fact remained long after it had been pivotally important. It would continue to remain too, because Andrew didn't forget.

That note. That fucking note. Andrew wasn't angry, didn't know how to feel anger anymore, but he hated that fucking note as much as he clung to it like a lifeline.

"Look, I might not know much of anything," Kevin continued, an edge to his words, "but I know of the Hatfords. If they're his family, they'll protect him, Andrew. If anywhere would be safe for Neil it would be –"

He stopped short as Andrew slammed the plate into the draining rack. Turning, Andrew stared unblinkingly at Kevin as he bowed his head, a scolded child returning to his meal. He likely would have continued to stare, continued to feel but withhold any evidence of the hatred churning in his belly, had Aaron not called from the stairwell.

"Andrew, your phone. Someone keeps calling."

 _So?_ Andrew might have asked.

"It's annoying as fuck," Aaron continued as though he'd heard his thought.

Andrew spared a moment longer to regard Kevin's bowed head. A moment longer to wonder why he bothered, whether he could truly maintain the promise that he'd held for years in the face of a betrayal, before sidelining the thought for later. Striding past him, Andrew abandoned the repentant Kevin and made for the stairs.

The final chimes of his ringtone sounded as he stepped into his bedroom. Pausing at his bedside, Andrew plucked his phone from the nightstand and flipped it open. Three missed calls from Coach. A sardonic part of Andrew wondered if he'd heard Kevin's cry for pity, but he shrugged the thought aside to raise the phone to his ear in reply. It had barely begun to ring when Coach picked up the other end.

"Andrew?" he asked, then continued without waiting for a reply. "You need to get back here. Now."

Andrew still didn't reply, leaving the question unsaid.

"I mean it. Haul arse, Minyard."

 _Why?_ Andrew thought, because why bother? What was the point? Why should he have to -?

"It's Neil."

The world froze from where it had barely been moving at all. _Why? Why, why, why, why -?_

If there had ever been a better answer to that question, Andrew didn't know it. He was striding from his bedroom before he'd closed his phone.

* * *

"So we _are_ going back to Palmetto?"

Andrew didn't spare Kevin a glance as he took the entrance onto the highway. He didn't slow around the bend, the Maserati cruising beneath him at twenty miles over the speed limit. Within seconds they were onto the wide, open road and Andrew stepped his foot down even further.

Too slow. It was still too slow.

Andrew had flown from the house in Columbia at a speed nearly as great. A fumbling search for keys discarded sometime over the past few days was the only reason Kevin had enough of a chance to gather himself and stumble after him to the car. Andrew wouldn't have cared if he'd been left behind. Aaron certainly didn't because this…

This was something that couldn't wait and dammit, driving eighty was too slow.

Andrew didn't care. For weeks he couldn't bring himself to – not for school, for goddamn exy, for Kevin and his apologies and the rest of the Foxes in their moping. His brain had been a throbbing weight in his head, the pounding in his temples all that he'd been able to hear for days. It had persisted through the days after they'd retreated like a kicked dog from the doorstep of Baltimore, one player less and quivering somewhere between grief and hope.

When he could hear again, could make sense of the words around him, it was to nothing of worth. Nothing but hot air blown in indignation.

"This is bullshit," Allison had said more times that was worth counting. "Utter bullshit."

"But what does this mean?" Dan had said. "I don't understand. What -?"

"Kevin knows," Aaron had said.

Because Kevin did. Fucking Kevin was the only one who knew anything – about Neil, about what had happened at Baltimore, and about the nature of the note that Andrew had snatched from Coach's hands the moment he'd revealed it.

_As a courtesy to my nephew, I have taken the liberty of informing you of the current circumstances. I will be keeping Nathaniel in my care until the situation resolves. Rest assured he is alive. You shall be notified if the status quo should change._

And nothing more.

Nothing.

Not a fucking thing.

The note from an uncle – because apparently the uncle at least was real – which posed more questions than it answered. Circumstances? The situation? What did it even mean? And the assurance that Neil was alive –

"Nathaniel," Abby had said, turning to Wymack with wide eyes. "So what Kevin said…?"

"He's alive?" Matt had said, his voice oddly pitched. "Does that mean -? So does that mean he was –?"

"What the fuck happened?" Nicky had said, tearing at his hair with white-knuckled hands. "Is he okay? Do you think he's…?"

"We'll be notified," Renee had murmured, peering over Andrew's shoulder at the note and echoing the words rather than confirming them. Andrew could feel rather than see her swallow tightly.

They spoke around him. Over him. Tossing quotes and speculations, fears and apprehensions. Andrew only read the note once, couldn't force his eyes, blurred with exhaustion, to reattempt what he'd already committed to memory like a testimonial, but he stared down at it nonetheless.

That note and the offhanded promise it held was the only feeble confirmation he'd had.

Across the room, Kevin had barely looked away from him. Andrew could feel the weight of his stare but didn't return it, and not for any misguided guilt at the sight of mottled bruising around his throat. Far from it. The story Kevin had told, the truths he'd revealed that weren't his to share but that Andrew needed nonetheless, resounded with every glance Andrew cast his way.

The Moriyamas. A family of criminals and crime lords. The Butcher, the money game, a trail of bodies, deals made for the most incomprehensibly inane reasons yet nonetheless holding such significance. It almost didn't seem possible, couldn't be true, except that it was. All of it. Andrew could feel it with a weighted confidence, of certainty, and in how Kevin's stuttered explanation made so many misshapen pieces click into place.

Neil had been lying, but only partially. That fact stung almost as much as the half-truths he'd properly revealed.

The note snatched from Coach's fingers months before all but burned in Andrew's pocket at he sped towards Palmetto State University. Months of waiting. Months of nothing, not a single word and no confirmation of the worst, and yet somehow not hearing was almost as intolerable. "This is a good thing," Renee had said time and again to Andrew's unspoken words. "If we don't hear anything that's a good thing. You know it is."

Why she felt the need to reassure Andrew, he didn't know. He didn't want it, didn't need it, and couldn't respond in kind. It likely had to do with the same reason that the Foxes eyed him sidelong, why Matt had so often considered him with a shrewd, thoughtful gaze, and why when he'd slipped the note into his pocket no one had questioned it.

Andrew didn't care about what they thought of him. He didn't what they thought of him and Neil, nor about any of their bets either. It didn't matter, because only one thing truly did.

His foot switched off the pedal only seconds before he took a sharp turn for the exit. Kevin cursed, his second hand joining where his first had been clinging to the door in an attempt to stabilise himself. Andrew didn't slow as he swept down roads, around the slower vehicles that seemed all but unmoving by comparison.

"Jesus Christ, Andrew, are you trying to kill us?" Kevin muttered.

It wasn't really a question and Andrew didn't reply.

"Why are you going so goddamn fast?"

That one was a question, but Andrew still didn't answer it.

He only touched the breaks as they pulled into the court, slamming to a quivering halt. Kevin jerked in his seat, all but shaking as he gathered himself, but Andrew didn't spare him a glance. He was climbing from the car and striding for the looming walls of the stadium with steps that were so close to a run they may as well have been. The sharp stab of the keys in his palm were about the only thing he could feel outside of the thundering in his chest.

 _It's Neil,_ Coach had said. It wasn't an explanation, but it was enough.

The door banged behind him as Andrew strode through. Footsteps loud and echoing on the polished floors, he passed down the central corridor without a pause for considering where he was headed. He hardly needed to; the sound of voices was like a lodestone, and Andrew had never more readily sought company than he did at that moment.

In the foyer was a cluster of unfamiliar bodies. Grinding to a halt in the mouth of the corridor, Andrew threw a glance over the lot of them, eyes darting in rapid search. Wymack stood to one side, his arms folded across his chest and face set into hard lines. Abby stood at his side in much the same posture, though a worried crease furrowed her brow. Before them, a trio of men stood in quiet conversation that paused at Andrew's appearance.

Unfamiliar faces turned. A hulking man, the embodiment of a bodyguard more efficiently than a bouncer. Another, a woman, utterly plain and in washed-out jeans. A third, short, middle-aged and dressed in casual business atire, who shot a glance to Wymack in silent query.

"Andrew," Wymack said, though in explanation or greeting it was unclear. Andrew spared him a single glance before turning back to the three intruders. "You got here quickly."

Andrew offered the barest nod in acknowledgement. _Where…?_

"Who is this?" the businessman said. "I was under the impression you were calling for his friends."

 _His friends,_ repeated in Andrew's mind, tinged with the man's accent, but it was secondary to the greater importance. Secondary to the weight of the uttered ' _his'._

"They'll be here," Wymack said. "Some are further afield, but most will undoubtedly arrive within the day."

_Where?_

"I was under the impression that we were maintaining covert operations, Mr Wymack," the spokesman said.

_Where is -?_

"And it will be kept that way."

_Where is he?_

"That's a thin guarantee. The situation is delicate at best. There are risks, Mr Wymack."

_Stop talking and just tell me where the fuck –_

"Of course," Wymack grunted. "And I'd be more than happy to discuss how to ensure they're minimised with you when the team gets here. We're talking in circles, Mr Hatford."

The businessman straightened slightly, shoulders setting back and chin raising slightly. It was a slight, smooth motion that managed entirely dismissed the thin line between arrogance and petulance, like a lion unfolding itself from relaxation into readiness. The man's eyes narrowed slightly. "You can understand my hesitation, naturally. Even with certain people taken out of the picture, the risks are exponentially greater in your country than where he could be better cared for, better protected. If you want me to believe that you could do an adequate job –"

"Coach."

All eyes swung towards Andrew. Affronted, frowning, curious. Andrew didn't care. He didn't care that his voice was little more than a broken growl of disuse, that his fists trembled where they were clenched at his sides, that even Wymack could have likely burst into flame with how much Andrew simply _did not care_ for the crap spilling from their collective mouths.

_He'd disappeared. Could have been dead. May have been, even with the useless and unfulfilled offer of 'notification' left behind like a shadow of a promise. And you're standing there, bemoaning trivialities while I'm…_

"Inside," Coach said with a tip of his head towards the court, and that was all. It was enough. Andrew swung towards inner court and it was impossible to do anything but run. Andrew wasn't sure he even remembered how to walk.

The corridor. The door into the locker room, passed in an instant. Through the mouth of that corridor and into the open stadium, the rows and rows of empty seats in orange and glaring white. And the court. The court that was empty but for a single figure seated at the very centre.

Andrew's chest thundered with a beat like he'd run a marathon. His fingers creaked from clenching so tightly. For a moment the impulse to run was suspended, frozen, untouchable. Then he was rounding the plexiglass wall of the court and bursting through the doorway with a bang that Wymack and his pointless company would have likely heard.

And Neil turned at the sound of his entrance.

Andrew wasn't quite sure how he crossed from the door to centre court. He didn't remember dropping to his knees and reaching for Neil, hand grasping the front of his unremarkable jacket. He didn't remember even though Andrew remembered everything, always. Neil didn't speak, didn't get the chance to rise from his knees, but he didn't try to. He remained still and silent in Andrew's grasp.

Frozen once more. Andrew could only stare at his face as Neil's lips wrapped soundlessly around his name. Only stare.

His cheeks were thinner. There were shadows beneath his eyes, the kind that Andrew saw in the mirror all too often. But it was more than that. So much more that narrowed the borders of Andrew's world into a skewed image of scarred skin still rendered pink and fresh.

The tattooed four was gone but the burn was worse. All circles and raised skin, discoloured and shiny with a newness that could have been days or months for all Andrew knew. His hand quivered in its hold on Neil's jacket as he flicked his gaze across Neil's face. The burns contrasted perfectly precise and deliberate scars upon his opposite cheek, a series of thin lines criss-crossing that looked as deliberate as those he'd sliced with his own hand years before.

Renee said that murderous wasn't a real feeling. That it was anger and hate, pain and loss and fear, that fuelled bouts of violent rage. Andrew would contest that. He didn't think he'd ever wanted to destroy something more in his life.

"I'll kill them," he heard someone say, and only the feeble croak of the words told him the voice was his own.

_Who?_

_Who did it?_

_I don't care, I'll kill them all. I'll tear down anyone who dared to hurt, to touch what wasn't theirs, to –_

But Neil shook his head. Only a slight shake, and when he spoke it was soundlessly once more. Or perhaps the pound in Andrew's ears, the rushing fury that hadn't quite seeped through his skin, drowned it out.

He heard it anyway in the shape of Neil's lips.

_I'm sorry._

Andrew's grasp on Neil's jacket tightened. Damn him. Damn Neil, Andrew hated him so much.

Sorry. He was sorry.

Sorry for leaving? For running when he hadn't even been the one to run? For slithering free of the protection Andrew had offered, the protection he would have given and succeeded in giving regardless of what Kevin said? Was he sorry for his face, for the burns and the slice of the knife that certainly hadn't been of his own making? Andrew knew self-inflicted injuries with keen familiarity and that wasn't it.

Or was he sorry for his half-lies and half-truths? That at least was Neil's fault. Entirely his fault.

Andrew almost said so. Teeth clenched so tight his jaw creaked, Andrew's hand twisted at Neil's neck dragging him towards him, and with a struggle he pried it apart to say –

Nothing. He couldn't spare a word as his eyes darted to Neil's throat, exposed by the twisted collar of his jacket.

The scar was thick. Thick, knotted, and far deeper than those that scored his face. Far less healed too. It wrapped around his neck, curling to the sides and across the pulse of his artery, revealed as he instinctively steadied himself in Andrew's insistent pull.

Andrew had never seen a cut throat before. Certainly not on the other side of the cutting.

"I'll kill them," he said again, every word spat with a hoarseness even greater than before. He hadn't spoken in a long time, a long, long time, but this wasn't it. This wasn't… it wasn't because… he could hardly breathe because -

Neil's hand rose to clasp lightly around Andrew's. To hold but barely touch, his fingers colder than the jacket and the summer heat suggested it should have been. Andrew's gaze darted instinctively downward, his vision narrowed until he could only see their overlapping fingers. Neil's hands were a mess of pink scars and pink circles echoing those on his face, dotting his knuckles and trickling thickly beneath the sleeve.

Murderous was definitely a feeling. Andrew didn't care who; someone was going to die.

"What happened?" he managed, struggling to raise his gaze to Neil's face. To his throat, then to his face once more.

Neil shook his head again. A heavy shake, as exhausted as the smudges under his eyes. Slumping back on his heels, he raised the hand that wasn't covering Andrew's to his throat and tapped with two fingers, front and centre.

Andrew blinked. _What?_

Neil's fingers flicked to his mouth, his lips parting briefly before closing again.

_What? You mean you -?_

With another shake of his head, Neil dropped his hand. It fell limply, silently, into his lap, and for a moment Andrew could only stare at it. At the faintest tremble to his fingers, barely perceivable but so apparent to Andrew's narrowed focus that it seemed to shake the room.

"You can't speak," he said, so quietly it was almost as though he wasn't speaking either.

Neil's smile was so small it barely warranted the term, but it was all the answer that Andrew needed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I'm aware that I have only a little bit of experience with sign language at best, and that kind isn't even ASL so please bear with me and give me the benefit of creative liberty! If there's anything outstandingly improper though, by all means, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix it up.

Neil knew the moment he was killed. The knife struck with the force of a shotgun, so loud it was deafening.

Neil only vaguely remembered falling to the ground. Only vaguely the searing heat of hot blood spilling over his fingers as he clasped his throat. Only dimly recalled the suffocating, gasping terror as his breath stuttered through his opened throat as much as his mouth.

He didn't see the body that fell at his side. He didn't notice when the room flooded with figures, tense with readiness, with weapons raised and orders barked. He didn't know for a long time that the fall of a knife in a killing stroke didn't sound like the firing of a gun.

The death of his father, though. That sound had been explosive.

How long Neil was in hospital he didn't quite know. His uncle wouldn't tell him either, wouldn't clarify regardless of any feeble questions wordlessly asked. The guards that stood outside his door, the nurses and doctors that slipped in on silent feet and murmured amongst themselves or to his uncle rather than to Neil himself, didn't concern themselves with questions that Neil ached to have answered.

Where was he?

How long had he been there?

Where was his father?

What had happened to him in the basement, and how was he not a dead body on the concrete floor?

More importantly, though – where was his team? Were they alright? Had they escaped the riot without injury? As the days confined to a hospital bed grew, as the hours lost in sleep broken only by shorter hours dizzy with pain medication gradually exchanged, those questions became all the more prominent. All the more important.

After all, if he'd somehow survived his father, what else mattered?

Neil counted three days of marked lucidity before he got any kind of answers. Hooked to cables of IVs and wrapped in more bandages than clothes, he could barely move even if the act of trying to sit up hadn't hurt so much his muscles gave out. When he managed, propping himself up in the semi-reclined bed, it took another half a day before his uncle returned to provide any kind of relevant answers to Neil's questions.

As many questions as he could manage, that was. The ache in his throat pained with each breath. Speaking was impossible, but writing wasn't much easier. Neil's hands spasmed with every word, skin burning and knuckles stinging at the slightest curl of his fingers as he fought to hold a pen. But Neil had to ask. He had to know.

"Your father is dead," Stuart said shortly when Neil managed to scratch out a question on the notepad the nursing staff provided. "Executed."

It seemed impossible. Neil could barely imagine it. He wasn't sure he believed it even when his uncle confirmed that the bullet had come from his own gun.

"You have been and will continue to be here for some time," Stuart said to another scribbled mess of a question. "Your injuries were… severe. We almost lost you."

 _Almost?_ Neil wrote.

"Your father slit your throat, Nathaniel," Stuart said without ceremony, and though his voice was flat and factual, the tension in his face all but quivered. "It's a miracle you survived at all."

A miracle. Neil seemed to have been gifted his fair share of those of late. More than he was due and more than seemed possible for a single person to be given.

 _How long do I have to be here?_ he asked.

"For as long as you need to be. You're barely a step away from death's door, Nathaniel."

_Where am I?_

"Atlanticare Hospital. And you'll remain here until it's determined that you'll not unravel at the seams before a strong breath of wind." Stuart bore the hardened expression of the man Neil recalled from his childhood. "Don't fight me on this one, Nathaniel. You won't win."

Neil wasn't familiar with the hospital. He was none the wiser with where he was, or how far away his team were. His fingers ached in their grasp around the pen, but he put nib to paper once more.

_My team?_

"What of them?" Stuart asked.

_What happened? Are they okay?_

Stuart grunted. In his seat, elbows on knees and leaning forward, he eyed Neil unblinkingly. "You shouldn't concern yourself with them, Nathaniel. That life is gone. Let it go."

Neil had never hated his uncle, but Stuart's words pushed him dangerously close. Let it go? Let _them_ go? As if he'd ever wanted to, ever been able to, even with the prospect of death looming over him in utter certainty. He'd released them but only because there had been no other choice.

But now? On the other side of what should have been his death, discarded like a butchered doll with in a pool of his own blood on his father's basement floor?

Neil wasn't letting anyone go, least of all his team. His body ached with an enduring intensity he hadn't thought possible, but the absence of his team – Andrew, Dan, Matt, all of them – was bone deep and fiercely competing for position of primary importance. Neil was quite sure it had won, too.

Pen shaking in his hand, Neil couldn't have attempted another written word if he'd known what to ask. Stuart didn't need him to, though. Reaching for the pen, he plucked it loose and tucked it inside his coat. It was as much a forbiddance of further questioning as a verbal reprimand.

"You need to focus on recovering," Stuart said. "Anything further will only slow the process."

Neil frowned. Recovery had never left him bedridden before. It was a pointless exception to make.

"No," Stuart said, as though reading his mind. His eyes narrowed and Neil saw his mother in his gaze. "You attempt to move and I'll have you strapped to the bed. Don't think I won't and can't, Nathaniel."

 _You can try,_ formed on Neil's lips, resistance and frustration rearing their twin heads, but at the barest hint of effort his throat whined into sharp protestations. His hand rose, pressing instinctively to the thick bandages as he swallowed a grimace.

Stuart's expression darkened. "Don't try to speak," he said quietly. "The damage was severe. It will be a near thing whether you'll be able to breath without concern again in any near future. Speaking is…"

He trailed off, and Neil wanted to ask. What? That he would never recover? The thought left him at a loss. The possibility of living with a debilitating injury barely more than he could that he had a life beyond his father. But the ominous suggestion of his uncle's words? Somehow, even without considering it, it made the prospect so much worse.

"You're alive, Nathaniel," Stuart finally said as he rose to leave the room. "For the moment at least, be content with that."

* * *

At some point they left the court. At some point they made their way past the grandstands and into the lounge. The sound of voices met them, echoing and forming into murmured words, but Andrew didn't hear them. He was only vaguely aware there were voices at all.

On the couch, Andrew registered with a kind of detached disbelief that the room seemed to have changed. That, in the course of the past few days of his absence, the centre of the room had adjusted itself. That centre appeared to be in the exact spot that Neil had placed himself, and like a compass unwaveringly pointing, Andrew found he was unable to fully shift his attention from him.

From his face with their patchwork of scars.

From his hands, where they plucked at the threads of his jeans, tugged at their opposite fingers, never released from their incessant need to move.

From his eyes, their unwavering stare that was oh-so familiar and said oh-so much.

 _He's alive,_ Andrew thought.

 _He's alive, and he's here,_ he thought.

_He's alive, he's here, and I'm never letting him out of my sight again._

There was little that was tangible passing through Andrew's mind but that simple, utter certainty. He didn't care how, didn't care that months before Neil tricked-yes, _tricked-_ Andrew into relinquishing his promise of protection before disappearing only hours later. Andrew vowed with a whole-body conviction that he would never fall prey to such foolishness again, and that Neil of all people wouldn't see such risk.

_Fuck the Moriyamas._

_Fuck the Ravens._

_Fuck his goddamn crime lord of a father and fuck the entire world. It's not going to happen._

Andrew didn't say anything, rarely did anymore and often forgot how to, but as he met Neil's eyes he saw recognition of that certainty. What was strange was that Neil didn't say anything either. Not without reason, but Andrew's ears strained with expectation nonetheless.

He was alive, and that was the only important thing. Scarred and battered, a pound or two less than what he should have been, but he was alive. Andrew didn't truly care what other challenges presented themselves. Moriyamas, Ravens, criminal fathers-they would overcome them all. Even so, that Neil kept his lips folded, his tongue still was… surreal.

 _He's alive. He's here. That's what's important._ Which was true, but… _It's not right_ and _anyone responsible will be destroyed._ Acceptance wasn't a consideration of Andrew's decision on the matter.

An hour passed. A day. A year, perhaps. Moment by moment outside of the passage of time, and though they didn't speak-couldn't speak-Andrew found the silence oddly… comforting? It had always played at a different beat between them, the scent of cigarette smoke and formless words suspended in satisfying stillness.

Andrew hadn't missed it. He didn't truly miss anything, wouldn't accept absence as a cause for wistfulness and self-pity. But he silently clung to each endless second with a grasp that made letting go impossible

Others filed into the room. Andrew noticed but didn't _notice_ , because Neil was at the centre of it all and that was the most important thing. Kevin came, which was good because Andrew required his presence to keep a sidelong eye on him, but he was only vaguely aware of him. Wymack and Abby, the three strangers shortly after, and they all arranged themselves around the room and spoke in exchanges that were quiet and loud and differing in intensity.

"Neil?" Kevin said, resurfacing from his stupor a brief bout of immeasurable time after entering the room. He'd taken his seat at Andrew's side with staggering steps. "God, it's really… you're really…"

Then silence.

"We'll need to sort out logistics of transfers to our accommodation for as long as we're here," the businessman said after some time.

"We will," Wymack replied. "When everyone gets here."

The man's hackles rose; not visibly, but Andrew could feel it even without looking at him. "This is unnecessary and a waste of valuable time."

"You're more than welcome to leave. But Neil's staying here."

"You can't keep him here if I don't allow it."

Andrew had a problem with that, but not enough of a problem to address it just yet. Wymack clearly did too from his wordless grumble, but he didn't get the chance to articulate before Neil snapped his fingers for attention and drew the conversation towards him with a flurry of gestures. Fingers swiping, raised to his head, his face, sweeping the air before him, and punctuated with an expression that was as pointed as a sharp full stop.

Andrew watched with unblinking attentiveness. He wasn't naïve enough to be unable to connect the very apparent dots. A second later, however, and his gaze switched to the woman across the room as she spoke.

"Nathaniel says that isn't your decision to make. He can choose to remain wherever he so desires, thank you kindly."

Silence met her words. Abby's mouth flopped open. Wymack's eyebrow arched. The businessman, the man that Andrew had subconsciously deciding must have been the uncle, turned slowly towards Neil. Andrew doubted Neil's silent words were quite as respectful as the woman suggested, and from the uncle's expression he suspected as much as well.

"Nathaniel," he said slowly. "We talked about this."

Neil's hands rose and gestured once more, and Andrew found his gaze snagged upon it. "He's not leaving until he's seen his team," the woman translated once more.

"I can make you leave."

"You could try, and you would fail."

"You're not as capable as you think you are. Not yet."

"He says you wouldn't know given you're barely around. His hours at the gym have been well spent."

Wymack scoffed but Andrew didn't glance towards him. He didn't look away from Neil's hands. From his face. From the expression that spoke almost as articulately as the words he couldn't voice.

In the ensuing pause, the beat of silence, the room didn't feel quite so resoundingly muted anymore.

Stillness held the room suspended. The bodyguard at the uncle's side shifted between his feet. The uncle's foot tapped sharply. The woman folded her hands in her lap, settling a little more comfortably in her chair. It might have been an awkward span of moment by moment, unbroken and enduring with the weight of Neil's stare meeting that of his uncle. Except that Neil couldn't leave anything alone. He never could, and his hands rising a moment later confirmed that.

"Nathaniel says that, given your conversation yesterday, he doesn't think there's any need for him to remain directly under your care. Your protection is no longer necessary."

"You agreed this was a visit, Nathaniel," the uncle said. "Just a visit."

"He changed his mind."

"Bullshit. You're not going back on this one. Even with the circumstances it is far too dangerous to remain in America. You have an option, Nathaniel. Take it."

Andrew thought he could read the very tone of Neil's thoughts from his expression. It spoke more than words ever could have.

"There's no way you can make him leave," the woman continued dutifully, "even by force. You can try but you'll fail, because he's made his decision. All he needs is to inform the master."

The uncle rose sharply to his feet. The bodyguard stepped forward in the same moment. Without thought, Andrew was on his own feet, planted before the couch, knife drawn, and-

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Wymack said, scrambling to standing as the bodyguard lurched forwards.

"Andrew," Kevin said a little desperately.

"Andrew, put the knife down," Abby pleaded from somewhere. Somewhere else.

"What the bloody hell is this?" the uncle snapped. "Is he aggressive? Wymack, is he a threat?'

Andrew saw the bodyguard reach for him. He saw the uncle swing towards Wymack, lips peeled. He saw and disregarded the woman as an unnecessary concern, saw a bloody tinge border his vision and the destruction of dead bodies lying on the floor because _no_ , it _wasn't going to happen,_ there was no one taking him _anywhere_.

Until Neil stepped before him.

He didn't speak. Couldn't speak. For all Andrew knew he may never speak again. But he didn't have to. As Andrew's heartbeat pulsed in his temple, drowning out the plethora of demands and snapping tones, his gaze flickered unconsciously to Neil's lips as they silently moved.

_It's fine._

The unspoken words were enough. Foolish enough that Andrew paused, because of course. Even without a voice, _of course_ Neil would never fail in his misguided insistence. Andrew didn't stow his knife, didn't lower his guard, but he paused as Neil eyed him, assessed him briefly, and finally turned back to his uncle. Andrew couldn't see it this time but after a moment the woman spoke once more.

"He says if you make a fuss he'll just dig his heels in more. He's not leaving until he's seen his team and properly explained the circumstances, and even after that it isn't your decision to make where he goes. He says that if you think otherwise, he has no problem taking the matter to higher authority and that you might find the outcome less pleasant."

There was something like amusement in the woman's words, in the slight quirk of her lips as Andrew flicked her a momentary glance, that suggested she may have adjusted her translation slightly. Andrew could certainly believe it. He'd witnessed enough of Neil's tirades and he didn't think the past months of his absence were enough to change him into a suitably polite young man. A whole lifetime likely wouldn't manage that.

The uncle's expression darkened. His eyes narrowed, and the bodyguard, sparing him a glance past his shoulder, respectfully took a half step to the side. "Nathaniel," he growled. "Be. Reasonable. You don't know what making such a decision entails."

This time, Andrew saw the gesture Neil made. This one needed no translation.

_Fuck off._

Andrew could have smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you so, so much to all of the lovely people who commented last chapter. I'm so incredibly grateful for your support. I hope you liked the chapter and I'll see you next time!


	3. Chapter 3

_I want to leave._

"No."

Neil slammed the pen onto the table atop the notepad. His hand twinged in a whimpering reminder of the scabs and sliced skin beneath their bandages. _No,_ Stuart said _,_ as if that was all of a reply that was needed.

Stuart must have realised Neil's frustration. Stationed before the door, he folded his arms and raised his chin slightly. He looked so much like Neil's mother it was uncanny. It was intimidating–-or it would have been had Neil not been so angry.

He'd moved-no, he'd _been_ moved from the hospital four days prior. From the hospital to a large if otherwise unremarkable apartment in a building too many storeys off the ground for Neil to ever be truly comfortable. The apartment itself wasn't dissatisfying in itself; it had every facility he could use between four enclosed walls, and a television to the outside world that provided a thin sliver of the answers that he so desperately longed for.

But it wasn't enough. It would never be enough, not when Neil was alive and his team was… somewhere else.

Snatching up the pen, Neil scribbled another retort. _There's no point in me being here. I'm fine so I should –_

"Don't write like that," Stuart said, crossing the room towards him and reaching for the pen. "You'll damage your hands again."

Neil wrenched the pen away from his reaching fingers. If he could have uttered a single word, could have cursed and railed at his uncle, he would have.

But he couldn't. In all likelihood he never would again.

'Severe lacerations and extensive scarring' was how the doctor had described them. That, right alongside the almost incredulous "it's a miracle your larynx survived the injury at all", as if his circumstances were the best possible outcome.

They weren't. Neil had rapidly grown to realise that when one miracle became reality, miraculous swiftly faded into 'not good'.

His tongue was tied in a way that was different to the effect of drugs. Different to the numbness of fear that swallowed words whole. Breathing didn't hurt anymore, not really, but to speak? The pain was impossible to push though even if his vocal cords had been able to work through their mutilation. It wasn't the worst-case scenario, could never be when Neil had been so sure he was a dead man barely weeks before, but silence? Voicelessness? And on top of that, being so utterly disregarded by his uncle when bound by that silence.

If Neil had been able to speak he would have afforded his uncle such a tongue-lashing that his mother would have slapped him silly. He would have taken it too; anything to release the agitation that simmered within him through every passing day of his imposed isolation.

The team was alright. They'd survived. A brief sports news headline-far too brief-had announced just that barely two days before, and Neil had been able to properly breathe for the first time since he'd woken. Breathe, and then struggle once more with the weight of loss that crashed into him.

The team were safe, but Neil wasn't with them. Again, a miracle had been provided but within moments it wasn't enough.

 _I want to leave,_ Neil had said four days before.

"No," had been his uncle's reply.

 _Please let me go,_ he'd attempted the next day. _I'll be fine. I'll get medical help if you insist, and the team nurse will make sure nothing goes wrong._

"No," his uncle repeated. "It's not happening, Nathaniel."

Neil hated when he called him that.

 _So I'm staying here forever?_ he'd asked the day before. _Why? What for? There's no point._

"Forever?" his uncle had chuckled humourlessly, so short and flat that it was over almost before it began. "It's been a handful of days, Nathaniel. Buckle up and focus on recovery."

Focus on recovery, he said. As if recovery needed active focus. As if the best thing for Neil wasn't to be with his team.

He could imagine what they were thinking, and it hurt. What they were thinking of him, how much they knew, how much they hated him, and if they even knew he was alright. Even with all he'd done, who he was, and the lies he'd told, they would worry. It was simply who the Foxes were. Dan's thin-lipped agitation and the way Matt raked his hands through his hair. Allison's increasingly sharp tongue and Renee's quiet concern. Kevin would become brutally committed to practice, Nicky would speak his worries into any ear that would listen, and even Aaron would withdraw into himself, cold-shouldering any attempts at civility.

And Andrew. Neil didn't know how Andrew would take his disappearance, but it could never pass easily. It wasn't who he was anymore than it was the rest of the Foxes.

Hatred, concern, anger, or even annoyance-Neil's team didn't deserve that. They didn't deserve such a blow after a riot had been staged for him but somehow caught the rest of them in its midst. Worse than that, their season was compromised. Neil almost couldn't consider it, the following matches he'd missed and those that were to come, but he knew it wasn't anything good. Disastrous was the more likely outcome; with such a small team and Neil's absence unexplained, they would be forced to withdraw from the season.

With the miracle of his life given and the possibility of seeing his teammates returned to him, the loss of the season struck like a physical blow. Neil had experienced a lot of those blows lately.

He had to leave. He had to get back to his team. There was no other option and, saved by him or not, Neil would fight his uncle to do so if he had to.

Planted before the door, as stoic and immovable as ever, it was as though Stuart heard Neil's thoughts. "Don't do anything rash, Nathaniel," he said, a cold edge to his words. "It's a mess out there. If you show up before they're ready for you there's no way you'll make it out alive again."

Snatching up the notepad, Neil jotted a quick word before flipping the pad towards Stuart. _Who?_

"You know who," Stuart said.

Neil frowned. _My father's men,_ he wrote hesitantly, paused, then added _Moriyama_.

Stuart hesitated for a moment. Neil could almost see consideration ticking over in his mind. _To tell or not to tell._ Finally, with a glance over Neil's shoulder through the filtered window as though checking for eavesdroppers, he took a slight step further into the room.

"Your father's syndicate is in chaos," he said. "The whiplash from the loss of their head has thrown those beneath him into a frenzy. More importantly, however, lies with the reappointment. And that," Stuart pointed a finger towards him, "necessitates that you lay low."

 _Why?_ Neil wrote.

"Fuck, kid." Stuart shook his head, huffing. "You're a loose end. Whether you're removed out of convenience or not is out of both your and my hands. You crop up, waltzing around like a dog off its leash, you call attention to yourself before I can fix up a way to make sure you don't get your throat cut for good this time."

Neil swallowed. It twinged a little more painfully than usual as though a reminder of just how close he'd come. Still, even with the risk, he scored a line beneath his pre-written words. _I want to leave._

"Bloody hell, Nathaniel," Stuart said, shaking his head almost incredulously. "You're as stubborn and persistent as Mary ever was."

Neil didn't know if it was a criticism or a simple statement of fact, but he didn't care. With frustrating slowness, he wrote a reply. _Then blame her. I want to go back to my team._

"Give it time," Stuart said as Neil turned the notepad back towards him. "I'm working on avoiding getting your head lopped off first."

_How long?_

Stuart sighed. "How long is a piece of string?" He must have seen protest in Neil's frown for he relented a moment later with a wave of his hand. "Who knows, Nathaniel? The young boss could decide tomorrow as easily as he could next year. The choice isn't up to me."

Next year? So long and without even the chance to speak to his team? To finally admit the truth as he'd never been able to and bear the brunt of their reply, hateful or otherwise? Neil would take anything, any kind of retort, provided he could see them once more. While his wounds were slowly healing, the gaping hole of his team's absence seemed to grow only more shredded and necrotic with each passing day.

Stepping alongside his uncle, Neil bared the paper as he wrote. _Can I at least contact them?_ he asked, though he already knew the answer.

"That wouldn't be wise."

_I don't care._

"Well, I fucking do, Nathaniel," Stuart snapped, his sister's rage surfacing with painful familiarity. "You're mine to keep an eye on in Mary's absence, so you're going to have to live with that."

_I didn't ask for-_

"You don't have to," Stuart said before Neil could arduously finish writing. "Your near death was askance enough."

_I'm not your-_

"You bloody well are my responsibility, whether you like it or not. Deal with it."

_Can't I-_

"You can get better. Try and mend yourself. Sleep a goddamn night through for once would be nice. Don't think I haven't heard that you're barely in bed at all."

Neil glared at his uncle. Not only were Stuart's retorts and the boundaries he placed utterly infuriating but the inability to even complete a sentence restrained him like a chokehold. He couldn't even state his argument. Always, regardless of how powerless he was, Neil had been able to speak for himself. He could always raise his voice to strike back, even when every muscle and bone in his body ached from abuse and exhaustion. Even when he knew he shouldn't.

The loss of his voice hadn't seemed such an enormous blow a week before. Not in the face of the miracle of his own survival that still sent a cold shiver down his spine to consider. Now, Neil felt it keenly.

After a moment of staring, his stance as unshakeable as his own, Stuart visible loosened his shoulders. "I understand this must be a hard pill to swallow."

Neil shook his head sharply. _You couldn't understand,_ he thought but didn't bother to write.

"This will hopefully be for just a short time, Nathaniel," Stuart continued, unhearing of Neil's silent reply. "There's nothing to be done but wait, so you may as well make the most of it."

It wasn't 'nothing'. There wasn't 'nothing to be done'. Doing quite literally anything else would have been better than remaining locked up in a ten-storey apartment building waiting upon the whim of a crime lord who may very well order his execution right on the tail of his father's. Neil's team, the only people he truly cared about, didn't know where he was. For all he knew, they thought he was dead; the news headline had been suitably vague about his whereabouts, and Stuart had been tight-lipped on the situation when he'd been coaxed into mentioning it at all.

Anywhere. Anywhere and anything would be better that here and waiting. Waiting in a silence that only the day before the doctor had indicated was likely to be permanent.

With another painful swallow, Neil finally lowered his gaze to the notepad in his hand once more. The sporadic placement of words in his familiar scrawl looked so pitiful. With a toss that held far less vicious enthusiasm than he'd intended, Neil threw the pen onto the desk on the opposite side of the room. He and Stuart watched it silently as it clattered, rolled, and fell to the floor.

"I know you're frustrated," Stuart said.

_No. You don't know._

"Your circumstances are hardly ideal."

_You have no idea._

"But we can both hold out hope that it will get better. And there are things you can do to help improvement to get on its way."

Neil shot his uncle a sidelong glance. If he mentioned the words 'work on recovery' one more time, Neil thought he really would deck him, consequences be damned. But Stuart didn't tempt fate. Instead, he took a step backwards and rapped his knuckles on the door into the suite. "Come in, Joanna."

Curious in spite of himself, Neil frowned as the door clicked open a moment later. With a glance at Stuart, an unfamiliar woman stepped through, easing the door closed behind her. Tall and willowy, unremarkable but for her distinct plainness, she planted herself at Stuart's side and turned towards Neil expectantly.

Neil stared at her flatly. She didn't look like much, though the lack of a plastered smile upon her face was a slight point in her favour. Neil glanced towards Stuart in silent inquiry.

"This is Joanna," Stuart said with a redundant gesture towards the woman. "She's here to help with your rehabilitation."

Neil's rehabilitation? With what? He was more mobile than he'd been a week before, and perseverance had slowly brought the range motion back to his fingers. His bruises had already faded to green, not that there was anything that could have helped the process along anyway. As for his breathing, beyond the brief encounters with the speech pathologist by way of 'reestablishing his instinctive capacity for swallowing and respiring', there was little else that could be done. Little else that Neil wanted to be done.

Joanna stepped forward into his silent speculation, holding out a hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Nathaniel," she said, her words quiet and as gently unfolding as her smile. Neil reclaimed his generous point. "Most people call me Jo. I look forward to working with you over the next few months, or even longer if need be."

Neil couldn't speak but it wasn't impossible to make his confusion known. Raising an eyebrow, he folded his arms across his chest as he met her gaze, ignoring her extended hand.

"Joanna will be assisting you with redeveloping your modes of communication," Stuart said over her shoulder.

Joanna spared him a glance before turning back to Neil. Her smile widened benignly, almost merrily, and Neil immediately decided he didn't trust her. "I'm here to help you learn to speak again, Nathaniel. I'm sure between the two of us we can work something out."

Neil didn't know what that meant, but for the first time in days he felt the slightest distraction from his single-minded goal of reuniting with his team. It was still there, still prominent, but this? It seemed another miracle in the making and one almost too good to be true.

* * *

They came one after the other.

Abby, returning bearing lunch that Andrew picked at half-heartedly. Wymack, after disappearing briefly to answer a phone call. Then the rest of them.

Aaron strode into the room with eyes disbelieving before they even locked on Neil. He shook his head, cursed under his breath, before dropping into the seat at Kevin's side. It took him a long time to speak, but when he did it was with a grumble that wasn't half as irate as he likely intended.

"You couldn't have brought me with you?"

Andrew ignored him.

Renee appeared next. Abruptly in the doorway, her hair sweeping around her ears the only indication of the speed of her arrival, Andrew noticed her immediately. Her gaze danced across the room, caught briefly on the intruders, then settled upon Neil. Something in her tight expression softened in a way that Andrew hadn't seen before.

She was across the room and kneeling before the couch in an instant. Her hands folded on her knees, she looked up at Neil with a small smile. Andrew doubted many would be able to detect the faintly flinty edge to her gaze as it skimmed over Neil's cheeks.

"Neil," she said warmly. "I'm so happy you're okay."

Allison was slightly less gentle.

"Where is he?" she declared, a distant voice that echoed down the corridor like a firm slap. "Where the fuck are you, Josten?"

Somehow, even arriving on a plane and in a taxi, Allison managed a visage of aesthetic perfection as she strode into the room. Andrew eyed her in silent warning when she stalked towards Neil, hands dropping to her hips and glaring severely as she drew to a stop before him. Andrew could only just make out the faint quiver of her tightly pressed lips.

"Don't you ever," she said, biting off each word as she spoke, "do that to me again."

Dan crashed into the lounge in a whirlwind of flushed cheeks and sweat-slick brow, yet when she embraced Neil it was with a slowness and firmness that bellied her mania. Matt arrived slightly later and his travel bag skidding across the floor as he all but crashed into the couch too, hauling Neil to his feet for a far more vigorous and smothering embrace.

By early afternoon, the only one who was missing was Nicky, an absence that was dampened by Wymack's quiet assurance that "he's already on the plane".

Just like that, the Foxes returned. And just like that, Andrew wanted them gone. Overwhelming, loud, demanding, it was as though a coup of chickens had descended on the room, feathers spraying and clucking in feverish chitters.

"How long have you been here?" Dan asked.

"What happened to you?" Allison demanded.

"What can you tell us, Neil?" Renee asked. "What _can_ you tell us?"

And finally, just as each had before him, Matt's horrified, "you can't speak?"

Andrew could see that Neil was uncomfortable when he tugged down his collar once more. Uncomfortable, but he did it anyway. Then, with a glance towards the woman across the room, he raised his hands to dip into his newfound mode of speech.

"Nathaniel says he will answer any of your questions. What would you like to know?"

Andrew saw the moment of confusion ripple through the room. He saw the glances towards the woman, towards Neil, then to Neil's hands. He saw the slow wave of comprehension pass over them one by one, the tentative nods and widening eyes, the silent 'oh's and the exchanged glances. Then-

"So it really is Nathaniel?" Aaron asked quietly.

Neil spared him a glance. That glance spread to the rest of the team as he nodded. Then shrugged. Then shook his head. Then, without further pause, he began making good his words.

The story the woman relayed was a coloured and detailed version of the facts Kevin had shared. A backstory and a revelation. A confirmation and then some. The woman spoke, pausing only as Neil would, as he at times pulled a phone-a different phone, Andrew noted, not _his_ phone-from his pocket and sent her a text that she read before relaying that, too. Andrew listened, absorbed, but didn't really care. He didn't need to know every detail just yet. Not really. That would come with time.

What mattered was that the woman spoke for Neil. She voiced his words, but that voice wasn't Neil's, either in sound or intonation. Not quite. The translation of signs was certainly swifter than the texting, but Andrew hated it. It wasn't truly Neil and he _hated_ it.

But he listened. For the moment he would listen, absorb, and watch Neil's hands as they flowed with an unexpected fluency reminiscent of his easy slide into German, into French. Andrew didn't know if perhaps Neil had already been capable of sign language; he likely could have and simply hadn't mentioned it. The flow of his fingers as they danced in silent language was rhythmic and almost enchanting to watch, the slight movement of his lips as he mouthed words intermittently barely noticeable.

Not that Andrew let himself be distracted. He couldn't when the uncle and his bodyguard sat across the room with their presence an unspoken threat.

 _You can try, but I'll kill you before you can take him again,_ Andrew promised. It was only Neil's ongoing story, spoken through the woman, that kept him from informing the man of the fact.

When Neil's hands finally stilled and the woman's voice drew to a halt, the silence seemed to sag. The heaviness of it all – it was almost audible in itself.

"So your father is dead?" Dan finally said.

Neil nodded.

"You're safe?"

There was a pause. For a moment, Neil seemed to disappear, his eyes flickering to something distant. Andrew didn't miss his hand dart briefly, barely, to his collar before stopping just short of where Andrew knew, where he'd seen, the knotted scar that had so nearly sentenced his death. Andrew's knuckles popped with the tightness he clasped them.

Then it was gone. The blankness disappeared. Neil gave another nod, albeit slightly slower this time. Andrew didn't miss the flicker of a glance towards the uncle, nor the deepening of the uncle's frown.

"And all this time you've been in Atlantic City," Matt said. He shook his head. "You've been practically around the corner from me this whole break."

"Yes, because Atlantic City is within spitting distance of New York City," Allison said.

"You know what I mean."

"Are you alright, Neil?" Renee asked quietly. "You said you spent some time in the hospital. Is there any lasting damage?"

She wasn't speaking of his voice; that much was apparent by the flick of her gaze to Neil's hands. It might have been a cruel question had it come from anyone else, but Renee always managed with a grain of compassion just enough to soften the edges. Andrew was grateful for it in this instance. He wouldn't-couldn't—ask it himself, but it was essential he knew.

Neil didn't reply with signs this time. He shook his head sharply, shot a glare towards his uncle as though to challenge him, then promptly proceeded to demonstrate the more than capable clenching of his fists. Andrew could have rolled his eyes at that if his gaze hadn't been trained upon the blanching scars that peppered footprints up to Neil's sleeve and beyond.

He would have to look into that. Just to know the damage. Just so that he would have an idea of how brutally he would tear apart any of the remaining Butcher's men when he found them.

Kevin reached for Neil's hand, turning his palm in a wordless request. When Neil provided, he turned it over with more gentleness than Andrew would have thought possible of him. A reflection of his own personal wounds, he suspected. It likely hit close to home for him.

"Can you still play?" Kevin asked.

"That's not what's important right now," Abby said, but Neil was already nodding. He met Kevin's gaze then turned towards Wymack with something like a plea beneath the intensity in his eyes.

Andrew had never noticed just how expressive a face could be. Definitely not Neil's, even if he had never been capable of hiding his thoughts completely. Had that changed, or was Andrew only noticing it more because of his silence?

Wymack seemed to understand his query even without the woman's translation. "You're a part of this team, Neil. If you want back in, then that's where you'll be."

Grin's immediately unfolded on every face. Even Aaron allowed himself a moment of positivity. "It will be a shitstorm with the media," Wymack continued, "but we'll manage. We'll work something out."

"That is not a wise decision," the uncle said, finally speaking up. "There is still a risk. Still a danger. Nathaniel, you know the options available to you and this isn't the right choice."

All eyes turned towards him. Andrew couldn't accurately throw knives, but he was tempted to give it a try just to shut the man up. To have him permanently erased from the picture. "Options?" Allison asked. "What options? For what?"

"It would be unwise if you were to be further informed of the situation," the uncle said. "Having Nathaniel's acquaintance already puts you at risk. You don't need to know the specifics. In fact, it would behove you to remain ignorant."

"Behove?" Allison said, arching an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Fuck that," Dan snapped, and for once Andrew agreed with her. "Neil's one of ours. If he's comfortable with telling us-"

"You have no idea what you're getting into," the uncle said.

"Didn't he just explain everything?" Matt asked.

The uncle scoffed. Had it come from anyone else, Andrew suspected the sound would have appeared immature. From his lips it was nothing short of self-justified condescension. "You know so little. _Nathaniel_ knows so little."

"And yet here he is," Wymack said. "And here we are."

"If he's going to stay here," Kevin said slowly, almost tentatively, "we should know what's going on. Right?"

"He won't stay."

Andrew's hand was on the hilt of his knife in an instant, but Neil was somehow faster. Somehow louder. He signed in a flurry that the woman was only slightly slower to translate. "Nathaniel says that he has three options. Exy, recruitment, or execution."

"Nathaniel," the uncle snapped, but Andrew hardly noticed. The ominous muteness that fell over the rest of the room more than announced their thoughts. Kevin's eyes widened, Matt paled, and Renee's brow folded into a mess of creases. Andrew stared at Neil's profile until he turned towards him, but he didn't need to meet his gaze to know what he thought. What he chose.

Exy. Of course there was exy as an option, and of course Neil would prioritise it.

Recruitment? Andrew could only guess but if it had anything to do with crime lords and Neil's family, he was nothing short of vehemently opposed to it. Did anyone truly believe that was a way out? That it was even a potential route? Given that the third option wasn't an option at all, Andrew could guess what the uncle thought, and he shot the man a flat stare and a silent promise.

_Try, and I. Will. End. You._

"Fuck," Dan swore once more, rocking back in her chair. "This is so fucked up."

Neil only nodded.

There were more questions. Andrew knew there were more, and he knew that they would be answered in due course. But the uncle had apparently reached the end of his tether, for he abruptly rose to his feet and stalked across the room from his corner.

"Come, Nathaniel." He stopped at Neil's side close enough that Andrew almost rose from his chair. "We're finished for the day."

Neil's cheeks immediately darkened, and Andrew could almost hear his enraged thoughts. The uncle didn't speak with the language of an adult to a child, but the impression was the same. Clearly Neil wasn't happy with it. No less dissatisfied than the rest of the team, however.

"Where are you going?" Allison asked.

"You can't take him," Dan said. "He's ours."

"He can stay here," Matt said, just as Renee added, "we're his team. If Neil chooses to stay, then we'll protect him."

"You chose exy," Kevin didn't ask but said to Neil. "That means you're staying. Aren't you?"

Andrew let the voices flood forth. Not questions but statements, and each with increasing defiance. Wymack rose to his feet, making for the uncle, while Abby slipped behind Neil like a slender wall, hands braced on the back of his chair. Even Aaron frowned at the uncle with very real dislike; Andrew may not know why, but it was the first time in months-years, even-that he'd agreed with Aaron on anything.

Not that any of the voices mattered. Bodyguard or not, Neil wasn't going anywhere he didn't willingly agree to. Andrew acknowledged that the Foxes would provide a barrier if necessary, but it wasn't needed. He would make sure of that.

"I didn't ask for a debate," the uncle said, speaking over the rabble. Gesturing at Neil, he took a half step towards him. "You gave your word, Nathaniel. We're leaving. Now."

Which didn't go down well.

"But –"

"You can't just –"

"You're not –"

"- if he doesn't want to –"

A riot of protests once more, but none from Neil. Not when Andrew almost expected it, regardless of his voicelessness. His lips folded and his hands clenched in his lap, but he didn't respond. It took Andrew only a moment to deduce why, and when he did he almost scoffed.

 _Maybe you really do cling to your promises half as tightly as I do,_ he thought. He'd doubted it because Neil had left, had truly doubted any truths and promises that Neil had made, but in a moment he realised –

_You never really broke any of them, did you? Even with everything that happened, you kept your word._

Andrew rose to his feet and Neil immediately glanced towards him. With a tip of his head, Andrew gestured towards the door. "We'll go. For now."

The noise was spiking but somehow, at his murmured words, it abruptly stopped. Andrew felt rather than saw all eyes turn towards him, but he cared only for Neil's. A slight frown, a slight tip of his head, didn't quite ask a question, but he was beaten to signing for an explanation.

"We?" Aaron asked.

"I don't trust them to bring you back," Andrew replied to Neil rather than his brother. Then he turned and led the way from the room to the ballooning of silence.

Andrew would rather not leave Kevin. He'd rather Aaron were at his side too. But in the past months it had become easier-no, less pivotal that they remain at his heels. This time, with Neil's presence, it became just a little more so. After all, even leaving the Fox lounge, when Neil followed shortly after him he still somehow managed to hold the centre of Andrew's attention.

Andrew didn't know where the uncle would take them. He didn't care enough to ask. Striding from the stadium with Neil at his side, the unknown seemed far less impractical a challenge to face. The weight of the knives beneath his armbands was a confidence he didn't need but would use if—when—necessary.

Instead, he found himself eyeing Neil sidelong. He watched as Neil dipped his head in a slight nod of recognition, then raised his hand to his mouth in a simple gesture that Andrew could only understand as he mouthed 'thanks' behind his fingers.

A sign. A word. It was something Andrew had never considered before but suddenly realised he had to know.

"Teach me," he said quietly, the last of barely a handful that he'd spoken in months.

Neil blinked. He cocked his head in thoughtful, silent consideration as they traversed the carpark. Then he replied-a nod of a sign that even Andrew could understand.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the delay. The end of year period is always a little crazy, and trying to juggle fics makes it that little bit more difficult. Have a longer one for your patience :)  
> WARNING that this chapter contains vague references of ableism and past abuse. Please read carefully and treat yourself kindly.

On silent feet, Neil took one stairwell, flew around the bend, and sped down the next. Two steps at a time, three, half of a flight and then to the next.

He'd been taken to the gym in the complex, but this kind of running was different to the rest of his rehabilitation. This kind of running had purpose. It had promise, expectation, the weight of sore and desperate need. All but skidding on the next step, Neil leapt down another, flew down another, and released his hold on the railing only long enough to soar towards the door on the bottom floor. The door that was unlocked, opened, and –

"Fuck!"

The snap of a curse punctuated the slam of an arm into Neil's belly as he was taken nearly off his feet. An arm that appeared from nowhere, grabbed, and held him almost off the ground as he was flung to a halt. Winded, grasping, Neil clutched at the bodyguard as he held him steady, shooting a glance up at the man above him that rapidly devolved into a glare.

"Again, Nathaniel?" The bodyguard was familiar, though his name was unknown. Neil hated him for catching him not once but _again_. "Can you give it a break for once?"

Wriggling from the man's hold, Neil broke loose only long enough to attempt to step away before he was grabbed once more. This time, the bodyguard's hand wrapped around his upper arm in an unbreakable vice. "Not today, Nathaniel."

 _Don't call me that,_ Neil thought, making a crude sign at the man that couldn't possibly be misinterpreted.

"Don't shoot the messenger," the man said. "I'm just doing my job."

 _Go to hell_ , Neil thought with another flick of his hand.

"Yeah, I don't know what you're saying with that one but come on. Don't make this hard for yourself. Let's just head on back up without a fight, okay?"

Turning, the bodyguard made for the building Neil had just burst from. The emergency exit door was tightly closed once more, and Neil might as well have stood on the other side of it for all the good his brief taste of freedom got him.

He'd gotten outside. Right on the roadside with cars audible and within his line of sight. As his uncle's bodyguard marched him back into the building, Neil couldn't help but peer over his shoulder towards the tight cluster of buildings lining the block. He was no more familiar with the city he'd found himself in now than he had been a month before when he'd arrived, and it was infuriating. He'd never felt so blind in his life. Blind and utterly frustrated.

Weeks stacking on top of one another had done little to ease the sting of his imprisonment, for imprisonment was all that Neil could think of it as. A guard at his door even when it was locked. No contact with the world beyond his apartment with its television and distinct lack of phones. No word of progress but that from his uncle's visits, and those were increasingly sparse as Neil drew further and further from his injured and incapacitated self.

Not that the fabled recovery that Stuart urged him towards made an ounce of difference. Regardless of how his mobility was restored, he wasn't allowed from the building. "It's for your own safety," Stuart had said, his words echoed by the guards as Neil demanded with scrap after scrap of words scribbled on paper. "Until we can be assured of your continued survival and independence, and that the boss won't take you out the second you step out in public, it's better to keep you out of sight."

As if that was an explanation. As if it left Neil with anything more than mind-numbing agitation and an increasingly desperate need for those he couldn't have. Months was a long time to wait without word or contact. A long, long time.

Riding the elevator back to the top floor, Neil stared straight ahead at the polished doors. He tried only once more to shake the clamp off his arm to little effect and instead settled for standing tense and straight, ignoring the guard as befit that guard's tampering involvement. If only he could have looked the other way for a minute or two more.

When the doors pinged open, it was to the sight of Joanna, her expression as mild and sedate as ever. She blinked at Neil as though the sight of him being hauled from the elevator held no greater significance than a neighbour appearing before passing into their respective apartment.

"Hello, Neil," she said, signing as she spoke and taking a step back as Neil was led towards his own apartment. "You look like you're in an agreeable mood today."

Neil didn't spare Joanna even a glance of acknowledgement as he was led through the door.

"Have you burned it out of your system do you think? Let loose a little and calmed down?"

Neil clamped his teeth together. _Don't respond. Don't respond, don't respond, don't…_

"Perhaps not. Are you feeling agitated? Would you like to visit the gym? Although, from what security has said, you seem to spend most of the day when I'm not here on the treadmill, which I might remind you is not ideal for your physical health. There's such a thing as being too active -"

With a wrenching jerk, Neil tugged himself free of the guard and spun towards her. _"Can you shut the hell up for once? What is wrong with you?"_

This time, Joanna smiled. A small, simple little smile that conveyed nothing but acceptance of Neil's aggravation. She eyed Neil's hands where they balled into fists, curling on the tail end of the words he'd signed, and when she replied it was without her voice this time, her sweeping gestures so much more fluid than he could manage. _"Wrong with me? Nothing at all. I'm simply reminding you to rest. Your therapist wants you to take it slow, remember."_

With a huff, Neil spun on his heel and crossed the room away from her. He was only detachedly aware of Joanna dismissing the security guard and the subsequent closing of the front door as he folded himself into the couch, snatching up the remote as he did so. The news was unremarkable, depicting little more than the stories that had been playing earlier that morning. Not a hint or a mention of the Palmetto State Foxes, which was an absence so consistent over the past few weeks it had now become expected.

Neil didn't turn towards her as Joanna lowered onto the couch at his side. It was only when she'd adjusted herself comfortably that she turned towards him and began to sign. He spared her his sidelong attention only begrudgingly. When it came to signing, it had become impossible to resist.

" _You seem very upset today,"_ she signed. _"Would you like to share anything?"_

" _With you?"_ Neil replied. _"No."_

The signed words came almost easily to him now, despite the gaps in his knowledge. Never as easily as speaking, nor as the silent, shared language that he could hold with some of his teammates, with Andrew, but easier. Hours every day for weeks on end had a habit of doing that. It was an expressive, fumbling language, entirely different to any he'd ever learned, but it was something. It was speech, and with his increasing awareness of just how unlikely the return of his voice was, Neil clung to that alternative with grasping hands.

Neil wouldn't speak again. Not like he once had. It was a loss he'd never considered and so hadn't thought to prepare himself for.

Signing was a distraction though. A useful distraction, as his mother's voice in his head reminded him. A distraction to stem the endless flow of waiting, of hours sitting in silence or staring at the television without really seeing it. If only Joanna had been more than an unshakably passive and good-humoured conversationalist, it could have been almost enjoyable. As it was, Joanna was the sort of person who seemed to lack an understanding of the word 'disagreement' in its most basic sense.

 _"_ _Definitely unhappy,"_ Joanna signed. _"Perhaps you'd like to tell me your thoughts? Why did you want to run today, Neil?"_

At least she called him Neil. Or the 'Neil' that was as close to signing out his name as he could fluidly get. It was one of her few redeemable qualities. " _No,"_ he replied with an curt wave of his hand. _"I'm not talking about this with you."_

 _"_ _It would be a good way to start the day, I think."_

 _"_ _No."_

 _"_ _You need to practise anyway. Why not?"_

 _"_ _Because I'm not talking about that with you,"_ Neil repeated.

Joanna cocked her head, her placid expression unwavering. _"Then with who?"_

Neil stared at her flatly. He couldn't get a proper read on her, but he didn't truly want to. She was a qualified ASL instructor, or so his uncle claimed. She was single, lived alone, and had little to no attachments, or so she herself claimed. She was bland in all but her signing, which she spruced up with a touch of enthusiasm and detailed facial expressions that seemed jarring when juxtaposed to her otherwise neutral impression. That blandness was almost mind-numbing.

That wasn't to say that Neil didn't learn from her. She supplied explanation whenever asked, albeit with a frustrating degree of slowness and sincerity that in anyone else would have felt false and undermining. In Joanna is was just dull.

Over the past weeks, Neil had been alone but for Joanna. Joanna, the guards that were little more than glorified babysitters, and the occasional interruption of his uncle, though Stuart's visits were brief and intermittent at best. With little but the television and the gym that he'd wrangled a hold of within days of moving to the apartment, there was nothing. Utterly nothing.

Neil wondered if this was what insanity felt like. He certainly felt most of the way there.

He couldn't see his Foxes. Beyond a brief mention on the news weeks before, there was nothing. No word. Neil paced the rooms of Stuart's apartment, chewing through his fingernails and flicking through sports news, but his persistence did little good. There was only so many miles he could run on the treadmill until even that failed to provide a modicum of relief. That was even without his babysitters hauling him away from the gym after a handful of hours because he'd been told to "make sure you rest".

As if Neil needed any more rest. He'd been doing nothing but rest since he'd woken up in hospital.

Joanna wasn't a friend. She wasn't someone Neil cared to know, to learn about, and her incessant blandness and the readiness that she spoke of the utter humdrum of her life and livelihood assured him that she wasn't any kind of a threat he needed to be concerned with. Her one redeeming quality with that she helped him learn to speak for himself once more.

Neil hated it but he needed her. For now.

Speaking in signs was different to verbal words. The grammar, the pronunciation, the articulation – Neil didn't care beyond how he could use it, barely listened to Joanna's explanations of the vibrant community that used it so liberally, but it was disconcerting to find himself familiarising with a language so foreign to those he already knew. Language acquisition had come easily to him out of necessity and dedication more than any real skill, but ASL was different. It certainly would have been far harder and taken far more time had Neil had less mind-numbingly endless hours on his hands to do little but learn.

That learning was a steep climb, but it was necessary. Neil was dedicated. Beyond that, when he'd first beheld Joanna speaking with her hands, he decided that when-not if but when _-_ he returned to his family he would be able to speak for himself. Translator or not, it would be with his own words.

Flicking his thumbs sharply, nails picking at one another, Neil paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. The signs. There were so many and required far more than simply 'signing' to speak. The full-body expression Joanna assumed when in the throes of explanation was so far removed to anything he'd even considered exploring before, and Neil doubted he would ever emulate her example. But he spoke nonetheless. Short, sharp, and simple, because commitment and rapid learning could only enable so much, but he spoke.

 _"_ _I want to leave,"_ he said, just as he did every day. And, just as he did every day, with every word, he deliberately avoided looking at the mess of his hands as he spoke. It was unlikely it would get any easier to see the mess of his skin and knuckles any time soon and seeing it did nothing to brighten Neil's mood.

In reply, just as she too did every day, Joanna nodded, smiling gently. _"It must be very hard for you. But you know you have to trust in your uncle to work things out for you."_

 _"_ _It's a little hard to trust in someone who isn't around."_

Joanna's smile somehow managed to soften further. _"He's a busy person. Do you miss him?"_

Neil blinked. Miss Stuart? He didn't know Stuart enough to care about him, let alone miss him. _"No._ "

Joanna's nod said she didn't believe him. _"It gets lonely when you spend day after day so isolated. I can understand that."_

 _"_ _Are we taking another deep dive into your neglected psyche now?"_ Neil rolled his eyes, turning back towards the television as he continued in what, according to Joanna, was 'quite inappropriate' in a conversation in signs. _"You need your own therapist, Joanna."_

Contrary to the expected response to a criticism, Joanna laughed. She always did. Neil doubted she knew how to be offended; he'd certainly tried hard enough to push her. From his periphery, it wasn't hard to discern her reply. _"No, I don't think so. I'm comfortable with myself. There's no need to ask for more than is absolutely essential, I've always found."_

Pushing herself to her feet, Joanna scooted around before him to block his line of sight to the television. Infuriatingly, there was nothing passive aggressive about her interruption. When Neil met her gaze, she was as unremarkably friendly as ever.

 _"_ _I'm going to make some breakfast. Would you like something? I'm thinking…_ " She signed something that Neil didn't recognise then, before he could even consider asking, fingerspelled W-A-F-F-L-E-S. As he withheld from replying, she shrugged. _"Okay. You can wait a little while then. I think your uncle will probably have some tea when he comes, so maybe later."_

Turning, she pattered softly from the room, leaving Neil staring after her for a moment in momentary confusion. He lurched to his feet a second later, hastening after her. With a knock on the kitchen counter for attention, he signed, _"He's coming today?"_

Joanna smiled over her shoulder and nodded. _"Just popping in, I think. It will be nice for you to see him."_

Neil didn't bother to reply. As Joanna busied herself around the kitchen, making a ruckus of clattering plates and a mess of baking ingredients, he leant against the door frame and chewed over her words. If Stuart was coming that day, it could as likely be to simply check he was still breathing as to release him from captivity. Neil wasn't foolish enough to get his hopes up for the former, but the flicker of desperation that lit whenever his uncle made a visit sparked once more.

He'd grown to both hate and ardently long for Stuart's visits. Despite his escape attempts, Neil knew his say-so was his only ticket to freedom.

The smell of batter and maple syrup flooded the apartment as Neil lost himself in thought. He didn't move from the doorway as Joanna stacked a plateful of waffles and bustled to the dining table.

 _"_ _You're sure you wouldn't like some?"_ she asked. Neil barely noticed enough to make out her words, shaking his head. _"Well, if you change your mind…_ "

It took another hour of Joanna cleaning, attempting to coax him into conversation, and his eventual, reluctant agreement to work on vocabulary before a knock sounded at the door. Neil was on his feet in an instant but hadn't made it halfway across the room before the door opened and the security guard let Stuart in.

As always, Stuart bore the impression of a businessman on the late end of his shift: slightly creased yet composed, and straight-backed with self-assurance. He paused in step as he crossed the threshold, eyeing Neil briefly before nodding to the guard over his shoulder. "You can wait outside."

The door hadn't even fully closed before he continued. "Again, Nathaniel? It's not amusing, and I'm growing less and less fond of having to outfit a new lock every time you break through them. Could you not just pick them if you're so determined?"

 _I have,_ Neil thought but didn't say, folding his arms across his chest. _It just doesn't get your attention._ He'd learnt weeks before that the more disruption and the more fuss he kicked up, the more visits Stuart made, if only to berate him. Neil had never been bothered by a scolding, and certainly one that didn't even include a cuff over the ear or a slap to the cheek. If it could get Stuart in the room long enough to pick at him with his demands, then he would do it.

 _"_ _Am I leaving yet?"_ Neil asked instead, just as were the first words he always spoke when his uncle visited.

It was so typical that Stuart didn't even need Joanna to translate anymore. Frowning, he glanced towards Joanna nonetheless. "Tea, if you would, Jo." As she left the room, he took himself to the couch, dropping his hat to the back of it without sinking into it himself. "You're a broken record, Nathaniel."

Neil didn't reply.

"You know the circumstances," Stuart continued. "They're delicate…"

He continued, but Neil didn't have to listen to them to know what he said anymore. Raising his eyes briefly to the ceiling, Neil silently echoed his uncle's words as he spoke. _The situation is delicate, and these things move slowly. It is and will always be messy, and the complexity of what we're trying to do-you're only a small part of it. You have no idea, and you're lucky that all you have to do is sit and wait. Focus on getting better, learning your signs, and maybe at some point the situation will clear enough that you won't be shot down the second you step foot outside._

Except that this time was different. Mid-sentence, Stuart paused. "You're only a small part of it," he repeated slowly, "which is why I don't quite understand…"

Eyeing him warily, Neil waited. When Stuart didn't continue, he edged towards him. _"What?_ "

Stuart didn't know the sign specifically, but he wasn't obtuse enough that day to deliberately misunderstand. With a sigh that was almost a scoff, he shook his head. "You're more involved that I'd hoped you'd be."

Neil didn't understand what he meant, but he didn't ask. The pause following Stuart's words was broken only by the hiss of the kettle next door.

Finally, Stuart turned and leaned against the back of the couch. His knuckles turned white as they clenched at his sides. "It seems the little boss has heard of you."

Neil frowned. The little boss? He'd pieced together who Stuart referred to long ago, but it didn't make his words any more comprehensible.

"You've made a name for yourself in the sporting world," Stuart said, shaking his head with the kind of derision Neil would have expected from his mother. "Can't be helped. The little boss wants something from you, so he'll see you."

Neil opened his mouth, closed it, then slowly raised his hands instead. _"What does that mean? What do I have to do?"_

Stuart couldn't have known what he said, but Joanna, as unobtrusive as ever, relayed his words from where Neil hadn't even noticed her re-enter the room. Stuart stared at Neil with a frown that was almost accusing as he said, "It means you're going to meet him next week. It means you'll have to make a good impression and prove if you're useful or if you would have been better off if I'd left you in your father's basement."

Neil swallowed. His throat didn't pain him anymore, but the tightness that seized it was sickening nonetheless. Yet, at the same time, a flutter brushed the inside of his belly, a twinge of something he hadn't felt in months.

He would meet the boss? He would prove his worth? Neil didn't quite know what that entailed, but at least it was something. Things were changing, and he would take any change he could get.

* * *

The hotel was unremarkable, tucked off the main road, yet bore the fine lines of money and arrogance. At another time, Andrew might have rolled his eyes at the casual flex of wealth.

Now, as he followed Neil, followed the uncle, the guards, the woman who spoke Neil's words, he barely heeded the building they walked into. But for a brief scan of the foyer, the receptionist with her fixed smile and practiced warmth, he followed in step as the uncle started towards the elevator.

Andrew had never liked elevators. He only made the exception when necessary and unfortunately Neil's compliance in this instance made it so.

The ride to the top floor was silent. Andrew stood in the back corner, Neil at his side, and eyed the uncle's guards without attempting to hide the fact. Similarly, they regarded him with the flat, emotionless assessment of professionals.

Not a threat, then. Not unless provoked. Andrew had suspected as much, but it loosened the tightness in his shoulders slightly to have his suspicions confirmed. That didn't mean they couldn't be a problem, but that they were simply not an immediate one.

With that affirmed, he shifted his attention instead to Neil.

It was nearly impossible not to look at him with the guards swept to the periphery. Nearly impossible not to run his eyes over every detail Andrew had been deprived of for months, every familiar line and intermittent spot of freckle or smudge of bruise. Of course, even under lock and key Neil would have somehow managed to bruise himself. He was nothing if not a magnet for trouble.

That magnetism was never more pronounced than in the scars he wore like begrudging medals of a history endured. The burn on his cheek, erasing Riko's four, was enough to have Andrew's hand quivering with the urge to break something. Anything. Everything.

It was perhaps a good thing, then, that the hotel stood at less than ten stories. The ping of the doors opening had the uncle striding forwards in long steps disproportionate to his height. With barely an inch of height between him and Neil, it was apparent where that particular trait came from. Andrew followed silently at Neil's side.

The room they entered, one of only two on the floor, was wide and open but for a hallway branching off into more rooms. As sleek and oozing of casual expense as the building itself, it carried the scent of disuse. Andrew doubted Neil and his entourage had more than stopped by before heading to the stadium, if at all.

Striding within, the uncle huffed as he relieved himself of his coat, tossing it over the leather-backed couch. Making for the kitchen, he shot a glare over his shoulder that struck Neil with a blow that glanced off his flat-eyed return. Nonetheless, Andrew felt his hackles rise and, planting himself at Neil's side, he folded his arms to tuck away his balled fists.

"That was a foolish move, Nathaniel," the uncle said, flipping through a glass-paned cabinet and drawing out a decanter. A shallow glass followed. "We spoke of this."

Neil sighed. It was such a familiar, audible sound that Andrew was almost surprised. He couldn't help but stare at him as Neil gestured a reply, couldn't help but stare keenly at the sharp shapes his fingers made. The woman spoke without instruction, a puppet before his string-pulling. "He did speak of it with you. He assumed you'd reached a logical conclusion."

"Logical?" The uncle glared over the rim of his glass as he tossed back a mouthful. "Your father's men are still on the loose."

"Didn't you say you were given the contract?" the woman—Neil—replied.

"There's a vendetta if not an established bounty on your head. We know this."

"Neil finds it funny, because he could have sworn you said you had it in writing by now. Mailed, wasn't it?"

"Contract or no contract, the aggravation of your father's kingdom out for your blood can't be so easily abated. Even if the word is spread of who you belong to…"

The uncle trailed off into another swig, and Neil signed into his silence. "Then they'll lose their heads for going against the boss. Problem solved."

"Not," the uncle said, glare narrowing further, "if you're fucking killed in the process."

Andrew flicked his gaze between them throughout the exchange. The words themselves, far beyond anything Neil had shared with the rest of the Foxes, was a matter that must be addressed, but for the moment he was caught again by the same jarring discordance he'd experienced at the court. It was Neil's words spoken from the woman's mouth. Neil's words responded to. Silent as he was, there was no denying that, even bereft of his voice, Neil was as loud as ever.

A burn in Andrew's chest, unrealised until that moment and unfamiliar, intensified. He swallowed the discomfort but it didn't abate.

"It's been months," the woman said—no, replied. For Neil again, Andrew knew. He wondered if she was permitted to speak otherwise. "Neil feels that if they were going to do anything then they would have done it by now."

"You're naïve if you think that's how the minds of trained killers and gangsters work," the uncle growled.

Neil shrugged. "So we'll see. In the meantime, I'm staying here."

"Irresponsible," the uncle grunted.

"I'll train with the Foxes, just as stated in the contract. I'm practically instructed to."

"Fucking irresponsible."

"And, by the time the new season rolls around, if anyone hasn't heard of the deal by then," Neil shrugged again, his hands falling silent a beat before the woman's voice.

The uncle's sigh was almost a growl. He sloshed another cupful of scotch into the glass, leaning back against the kitchen counter. "I'm leaving eyes on you," he said. "No more complaints this time. Until I'm sure the hydra heads of your father's coterie have been appropriately sliced off."

Neil's lips pursed but he didn't reply. Or, Andrew suspected, it was his reply given the uncle rolled his eyes.

"Don't give me that. Protest and I swear I'll stay behind too."

"He thinks you're… perhaps telling a lie," the woman said of Neil's brief sign, a smile twitching at the corners of her lips.

"I suspect it was something less delicate he said than that. You swear at me often enough that even I've picked up on them by now, Nathaniel." Another sigh was lost into his glass. "But you're wrong. If it means your safety… you're still Mary's son."

Neil made the same sign, though a little less sharply this time. Andrew eyed the uncle as he huffed in something like resigned amusement. The coiled tension, the looming anger and threat that had been emanating from him since the moment Andrew had first seen him, eased to little more than a sliver of its prior size.

"Away with you," he said with a shake of his head, taking to his glass once more. "Don't cause a ruckus, the two of you. And you," he pointed one of the fingers holding his glass towards Andrew, his eyes narrowing slightly once more, "I don't care who the bloody hell you are but I'm watching you. Give me any reason to and I'll put a bullet through your skull."

Neil made a sharp gesture, his own glare flashing fast, to which the woman translated, "Neil… encourages you not to tempt fate."

Andrew didn't need the woman to admit that too was a watered-down version of Neil's words.

Turning on his heel, Neil left his uncle grumbling into his glass, bypassing the guards stationed on either side of the door without a glance. Andrew followed a step behind, sparing them only slightly more of his own attention.

The door into the second room on the right closed behind him at Neil's hand. Beyond was a simple room, a bed with high mattress and plump pillows consuming the majority of the space, and a wide floor-to-ceiling window consuming a significant portion of the outer wall. Andrew took himself to it, peering beyond at the modest city-line and deliberately glancing at the plummeting drop that was sharp enough to turn his stomach in his gut. He shook off the brief bout of vertigo, turning back to Neil, and made the deliberate choice to lean back against the glass.

Neil. As if it was possible to spare an ounce more of attention for what lay beyond the window when Neil was in the room.

He was as silent as he'd been since Andrew had first seen him hours before, stationed in the centre of the room and watching Andrew as though expecting him to make the next move. What that move was, Andrew didn't know. Intention was the furthest thing from his mind when the entire room seemed to revolve around Neil.

He could stare at him forever. Just looking. Just seeing. Just having him close. Andrew could barely admit it to himself, but it was impossible to draw a full breath yet simultaneously the first time he'd properly breathed since Binghamton.

Neil, however, had never been one for long silences. As minutes stretched, he shifted from foot to foot, gaze running over Andrew as keenly as Andrew eyed him in return. He took a slight step towards Andrew only to abort it a moment later and skirt around the bed to a lone duffel bag tucked neatly at its side. A moment of fumbling and he drew a laptop from within, tossing it onto the bed before kneeling before it and flipping it open.

Andrew edged forwards. Arms folded, he stood at Neil's shoulder, watching his fingers swipe across buttons with practiced surety. It was a new model, fitting of the expensive rooms. Neil pulled up a blank page and, fingers dancing swiftly across the keys, typed out a sentence.

It was surreal. Andrew was struck by it again, and for a moment he could only stare at Neil sidelong. How surreal that someone so loud, to incessant, so sharp-tongued, would never use his voice again. In the face of his return it was the smallest of prices to pay, but it was something to reconcile. Something Andrew would have to accommodate and adapt to.

Just like the signs.

Gaze moving from Neil's fingers—his fast, dancing fingers defaced with circular burns and mottled skin yet still the same beneath their damage—Andrew glanced at the words spilling forth on the screen.

_I don't know where to begin. There's so much to tell you, so much you should know and that I owe you, that I wouldn't even know where to start. For what it's worth, I'm sorry, even if you don't want to hear it. I'm sorry I didn't tell you, and that I haven't been able to contact you even though I wanted to, and I don't know if I can ever make it up to you but –_

Andrew grabbed his hands. He didn't like it, this outpouring of apologies. He didn't like that he was owed them, that Neil felt he was owed them, even if a fervent part of him wanted answers. He wanted them the same way he wanted to grasp Neil's hand and never let go, the way he wanted to stare at him and stare and stare until the truth—that he was truly right beside him—rung with utter certainty rather than the hesitant disbelief that still fogged his thoughts. Hours wasn't long enough to be sure. Days wouldn't be long enough.

Neil's hands paused immediately under Andrew's touch. Sinking back onto his haunches, he turned to regard him silently, so silently, yet with words spilling from his gaze as though he spoke them aloud. Andrew cursed that he couldn't hear them and cursed himself that he felt he needed to.

 _He's here. I have him._ It was an impossibility yet felt like an inevitability.

Which of them moved first Andrew didn't know. It didn't really matter. One moment he was at Neil's side, half a foot between them and only the clasp of his hand a link to his solidity. The next he had Neil in his hands, his fingers digging into his shirt, their lips crashing together and immediately locked in unbreakable warmth.

He swallowed Neil's breath, his gasp that tasted almost like words. His hands fingers couldn't hold tight enough, couldn't touch enough, weren't enough as he grasped his waist, his neck, cupped a hand around the back of his head to drawn him closer, deeper. Neil met him every step of the way, and it was such familiarity that Andrew almost quivered with it.

In a sparingly short pause, Andrew grasped Neil's hands where they rested dutifully in his lap and raised them to his shoulders. The weight of them, touch so usually abhorrent but _this_ touch so perfectly right, so unwaveringly missed, seeped through Andrew's shirt and seemed to spread all through him like a virulent plague.

In this, there was no need to speak. In this, there was nothing more essential that the warmth of Neil's chest as Andrew tugged him towards him, the twitching familiarity of his arms as they tightened just slightly, the pervasive taste of him as Andrew all but swallowed him in messy mouthfuls of desperate kisses.

Maybe they would talk. Maybe they needed to. But not yet. For now, it was all Andrew could take to simply feel.

* * *

The skyline had faded to a vivid purple by the time Andrew felt even a slight willingness to release Neil from his hold. Stretched across the bed in a jumble of unbuttoned jeans and loose limbs, Andrew watched Neil across the distance between them. Untouching but still close, and only untouching for the moment. Through the semi-darkness, Andrew could make out heavy lids and lips plump with kisses, cheeks still flushed by the aftermath of heady pleasure and gasped breaths.

Andrew doubted he would sleep that night. To cease staring was an impossibility that even he was unlikely to protest to.

The silence permeating the room replaced heavy breaths and fumbling bodies. It was calming rather than static, soothing rather than stagnant. In spite of it all, of the infuriating, irreversible loss of Neil's voice, Andrew revelled in it. And, because it had been nearly ten minutes since he'd touched him, he reached a hand towards Neil and prodded the back of his hand. Neil turned it over, gaze dropping to his own fingers, and Andrew picked them up.

Scars. More scars than there had been. Scars that held stories of horrors that Andrew would hear, that he'd learn of and drink in with the same silent attentiveness that he always had. Those scars could invoke fury, and should Andrew ever confront the person who placed such a mishmash of destruction upon Neil's skin he wouldn't hesitate.

But beneath those scars, the hands were still the same. They still curved loosely around Andrew's fingers as he pressed his own to the pads of each print, running his thumb over Neil's palm and to his wrist. The scars stretched there too, dotting up his arms in a patchwork more perfectly circular than the misshapen attempts on his knuckles. Neil twitched minutely but didn't withdraw from Andrew, though his gaze drew away from the scarring to pointedly stare over Andrew's shoulder. A thought brushed through Andrew's mind, of privacy and unrequested gifts, before he set it aside to address later.

For now, he spoke. "Who was it?"

His voice was still rough. The strain of disuse still tightened the edges of his words. But Neil didn't complain, didn't even seem to notice, and in a shuffle that somehow managed to maintain Andrew's hold upon him while retrieving his phone from his pocket, he typed out a reply.

That would have to change. Just as Andrew had thought earlier that day, this mode of speaking would certainly have to change.

Neil turned the phone towards him, and Andrew squinted through the glare. _It doesn't matter. She's dead._

Andrew grunted. Infuriating, but adequate for the moment. "What was her name?"

Neil typed another quick reply. _Lola._

"Did you do it?"

Neil huffed. _Unfortunately not._

Andrew considered for a moment, fingers pausing on Neil's arm to simply hold instead. "How do you say it?" At Neil's frown, Andrew added, "with your hands. Show me."

Comprehension dawned and Neil typed out a quick reply on the phone. _Letters,_ he said, before dropping the phone between then and raising both hands. With deliberate crooks of his fingers he played out a handful of shapes.

Andrew didn't bother to mirror them. That would be for later. But he absorbed it with a growing decisiveness that had been born from the moment he'd seen the woman speak Neil's words in the stadium lounge. "And the rest?" he asked.

It took Neil only a moment to understand. Then, with slight nod, he began a string of different shapes, different letters, pausing to draw each on Andrew's hand as though Andrew hadn't even the knowledge of the written alphabet. Andrew didn't complain; he would withstand the potential condescension that could be construed from the teaching in exchange for the unexpectedly welcome feeling of Neil's persistent touch.

It was something small. Something new, different, and promising. Andrew had never considered the language of signs before, had never had an interest, and had shrouded his own silences in completeness. There was no need to speak without words—until now.

Neil was finishing his slow explanation with a rather self-explanatory 'Z' when a knock sounded on the door. Andrew immediately sat up but refrained from launching himself across the room to tell whoever presumed to interrupt to fuck off.

"Neil?" a voice said from the other side. "I'm ordering dinner from the menu tonight. Would the both of you like anything?"

The woman. The woman that Andrew still didn't know a single thing about other than that she spoke for Neil. That in itself was frustrating, disgusting despite being useful. Glancing at Neil, he was met by a shrug that couldn't have been spoken better with words.

"Who is she?" Andrew asked, because even if she was a useful tool, he wouldn't trust her as far as he could throw her.

Neil considered for a moment. It was strange, how a twist of expression, the pursing of lips, and the direction of a gaze could say so much. Andrew had never so keenly noticed before. Had it been there to notice? Was it simply more pronounced in relative silence?

Instead of typing out a reply, Neil gave another slow shrug. It wasn't an explanation, but Andrew didn't really need one. The woman was a tool, an unknown commodity, and one that didn't bear thinking about when she became redundant. Firming his resolve, Andrew decided to ensure that redundancy arose more swiftly than not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! As always, I live and breath for validation (kidding, but only mostly) so I'd love to hear your thoughts.


	5. Chapter 5

Ichirou Moriyama didn't resemble Riko. Not at all.

There were certainly superficial similarities. The features that could be recognisable if stared at for long enough. But the space Ichirou filled, the oozing sense of composure and control, was entirely lacking in Riko.

Neil didn't know if that made him more dangerous or less. With the presence of two bodyguard that somehow seemed negligible in his presence, he suspected the former.

Ichirou regarded him across the room. Tucked pristinely into a business suit that radiated superiority more thoroughly than Stuart's did, he sat with legs crossed and the posture of one who could remain straight and poised for hours on end. Neil battled the mounting urge to shift beneath his gaze; long minutes of silence and staring had never felt so loud.

This was it. This could be the end, or it could be the beginning. It could be freedom if Neil played his cards right.

"So. You can no longer speak."

The first words from Ichirou's mouth since he'd strode into Neil's jail cell wasn't a question. Had he not been staring at him directly, Neil may have suspected he wasn't speaking to him at all. It was possible he wasn't. Nonetheless, Neil nodded.

Ichirou's expression was smooth and unshakable. "You're a liability, Wesninski," he said. "Even more so than your father."

Neil resisted the urge to glance towards his uncle in the corner of the room.

"A liability that could prove damaging if let loose."

Neil swallowed.

"So, the question remains," Ichirou's foot twitched minutely, "why I should leave you alive."

It too wasn't really a question, but Neil took it as such. With a glance towards Joanna, he raised his hands in a rapid query.

"Nathaniel asks if he may speak," Joanna asked, referring to him by his father's name as Stuart had meticulously demanded only hours before.

Ichirou didn't spare her a glance but flicked his fingers towards Neil in what could be taken as an affirmative. Neil resisted the urge to take a deep breath, raised his hands and spoke.

"You have no right to trust me," Joanna spoke for him. "Just as you had no right to trust my father, despite inheriting his loyalty from your own father."

Ichiorou's hum was neutral and barely audible.

"As such, I know that my promises mean little to you. That doesn't mean I can't state my stance and my own loyalty nonetheless."

Neil felt rather than saw Stuart shift in the corner behind him. Neil didn't spare him a glance; he knew his uncle would be quivering with the urge to speak, to nudge him into the formulated subservience they'd rehearsed at his most recent visit. A very small part of Neil knew that it was the safest thing to do, that committing himself to the Moriyama family and acting at their every whim would save his life.

But it wasn't a life he wanted to live. Caution would only get him so far.

"I can't promise to be useful, but I can commit myself to your service," Joanna said, following Neil's gestures as soon as he made them. "If you feel it's within your power to let me loose than I'll prove it to you."

"My power?" Ichirou echoed.

In anyone else the words might have sounded amused. From him, they rung in Neil's ears as a threat, a warning.

"Your leniency," he corrected deliberately.

Ichirou hummed once more. His foot twitched again. "Unlikely that you could be useful. Explain."

 _Here it is._ Neil did take a steadying breath this time. "A professional exy player makes eight figures a year. If I make court, the return will be even greater. Let me show my loyalty by committing that to your empire."

"Exy," Ichirou echoed, again amused yet not. "Is that all you're capable of?"

"Largely," Neil said, ignoring Stuart's hiss from behind him. "More specifically, it's where I'll be of most use to you. What I can contribute the most. If I commit my earning to yourself and your empire, the profit margin will be substantially greater than anything else I know is within my individual's capacity. Allow me to pursue it with relative freedom, give me your go ahead to put stops in place, and I can at least double that number. Perhaps it could even make up for your brother's deficiency."

It was a slow-going explanation, broken by fingerspelling that Neil leapt through as fluidly as he could manage. Ichirou's expression didn't shift throughout, but his foot stilled in its twitching. Neil held his ground, steadfastly ignoring Stuart's aborted step forward, and prayed the bodyguards didn't raise their weapons at his daring.

"What have you to say of my brother?" Ichirou said absently. Absent, yet with underlying warning.

Neil held his breath as he stepped forward onto eggshells. "Riko is a loose cannon," he said, Joanna speaking over Stuart's growled "Nathaniel". "He has done nothing short of make blunder after demonstrative blunder in the past year in a misguided attempt to assert his dominance on the exy platform."

"You speak out of turn, Wesninski," Ichirou said.

"My apologies, my lord, but I won't retract the truth." Neil paused, awaiting with thundering heart and unblinking attentiveness for the slightest tip of Ichirou's head to continue. When he did, he spoke in fingerspelling as often as signs. "In not even twelve months, Riko has been embroiled in a string of defaming headlines. He has deliberately tampered with the mechanics of the NCAA league, incited violence on the court and off, and has further used the Moriyama finances to fuel not only outsourcing of confidential information but also enactment of manslaughter and assault upon two members of the division."

"Nathaniel," Stuart said, appearing at his shoulder. "You should not make such accusations on the basis of gossip–-"

"Is it?" Ichirou held Neil's gaze unwaveringly, and Neil stared back with every inch of confidence he could muster. "Speak as you will, Wesninski, or forever hold your peace with a well-deserved bullet through your skull. Such indiscretions are intolerable if baseless."

"He speaks out of turn," Stuart began, but Neil gestured over him with a pointed glance towards Joanna.

"I have seen the evidence, but I know that my word isn't enough to convince you of his actions. Nor do I assume to suggest it warrants your investigation; I wouldn't necessitate such a thing of you, my lord. However, what I can say is that his outward displays of arrogance have the potential to smear your good name, and that his liberal use of your finances should see return he is not providing. I offer my services to replace them."

Neil ignored Stuart's hand latching onto his shoulder. He ignored his hiss of warning, the apologies he repeated to Ichirou, and stared at the yakuza boss with all the unwavering intensity Ichirou returned it. He knew he had as likely signed his death sentence as his freedom, but Neil wouldn't take it back if he'd had the chance.

When Stuart's words finally died, his apologies dissolving as the grasp he had on Neil's arm tightened painfully, Ichirou finally spoke. "I should kill you for that, Wesninski."

Neil nodded. Pleading for mercy wouldn't do him any good anyway.

Ichirou's foot twitched once more. The ringing silence that accompanied it was like static quivering in the air. "You have conjured some curious suppositions," he finally said. "Should they prove baseless, you won't live to act out your proposition."

Neil didn't dare to breathe, frozen as Ichirou considered him flatly.

"Eighty percent of your net worth," he said after a moment. "For your entire career."

Bones creaked as Stuart's arm tightened even further. Neil didn't spare him a glance, nodding.

"And your double. I presume you mean to surpass Riko's earnings with your suggestion."

Nodding again, Neil rapidly made good the suggestion. "Kevin Day," he spelled out.

Ichirou's eyes narrowed slightly. "Explain."

"Riko has gone to violent lengths to ensure Kevin's incapacity in an attempt to maintain his position as top of the ladder. As Kevin was, until this intervention, an asset of the Moriyamas, this violence can be seen as a drain upon your resources."

"Accusations, Wesninski," Ichirou said lowly. "Baseless accusations."

 _Baseless only in the sense that you haven't looked into them,_ Neil didn't say. Instead he inclined his head and continued, Joanna keeping pace with every word. "Perhaps, but the void between Kevin and Riko has detached him from any future contributions he might make to the Moriyamas. He has been 'let loose' and no longer contributes to the prospective output of the Edgar Allen cohort. I can fix that."

"You promise a substantial amount," Ichirou said. "Some would consider you over-estimating your capacity."

"Then let me prove it. Let me play for you, my lord. Let me loose and—" He paused. It was a wager, but if he could manage it? If he could manage it… "I'll not only double my number. I'll triple it."

Ichirou fell silent once more. He didn't ask who the silently suggested third was, though Neil knew he understood the unvoiced suggestion. He was as composed, as expressionless, and as foreboding as he'd been from the moment he walked in. Neil had lost the feeling in his hand beneath the tightness of Stuart's hold, but he didn't dare to shake him loose. Any disruption of the static status quo seemed likely to tip the scales away from him, and the firearm at the hip of each bodyguard looked far too accessible.

But it was done. His piece was said. It wasn't as Stuart had written out for him, was far from it, but it was the most he could do. He could only hope –

"You promise more than you're likely to deliver, Wesninski," Ichirou said. "We shall see how competently you make your attempt." Rising to his feet, Ichirou crossed the room. He paused alongside Neil, and though there was barely an inch or two of height between them, Neil felt it as miles beneath his hawk-like gaze. "Eighty percent. From each of you. Do not disappoint."

With long strides, he left the room, shadowed between his bodyguards yet somehow managing to soar above them. The snap of the door closing was deafeningly loud in the otherwise silent room, and the ring of it hung in an enduring echo that long surpassed the sound of departing footsteps.

It was only when dizziness began to cloud the edges of Neil's vision that he realised he'd yet to draw a breath. With a shaky gasp, he closed his eyes, took another breath, another, and finally glanced towards his uncle. Stuart still held him, ashen beneath the splotchy flush of his cheeks, and he seemed to have only just recalled the need to breathe himself. Releasing Neil's arm from his grasp seemed a struggling, conscious effort.

"You're a bloody idiot, Nathaniel," he said. "A fool. Mary would have wrung your neck if she was here."

Turning away from him, Stuart crossed the room towards the kitchen, head shaking and hand massaging his temple. To the sound of the kettle boiling, Neil drew his gaze back towards the apartment door.

It was done. The ultimatum was set. Kevin's fate, extricated from Riko's, was sealed as much as his own, but Neil hadn't felt anything closer to freedom in months.

The closed door no longer seemed quite so impregnable.

* * *

Wymack, being ever attuned to the needs of his Foxes, was at the court before Andrew and Neil arrived the following day. Andrew wouldn't have been surprised to find he'd slept there just in case; it was certainly early enough, with dawn just peeling back it's blanketing veil.

Andrew had barely slept the night before. It had been a battle of self-ridicule and self-assurance that had finally had him all but forcing his eyes closed. In spite of the scant couple of hours he'd managed, lying at Neil's side had been one of the most restful night's he'd had in months. Years, perhaps.

Even so, the moment Neil had shifted just slightly, his usual sleep-bound immobility falling away with wakefulness, Andrew was alert. It was even earlier than dawn at that point, but Andrew was satisfied to disregard further attempts at sleep to lose himself in Neil's mouth, erasing the distance between them that hadn't changed an inch overnight.

When they finally disentangled themselves, Neil led the way into the living room. The uncle was already awake and seated at the table fiddling with a cup of tea, and a bodyguard was dutifully stationed at the door. The uncle glanced up at Neil's entrance, only to roll his eyes as Neil gestured a thumb towards the door.

"It's barely five, Nathaniel," he grumbled. "Could you perhaps wait until room service has opened at least?"

Neil didn't reply, or at least what he did was less obtrusive than would have once been his style. Andrew found that, in the absence of words, a raised eyebrow and deliberate flick of his thumb once more said all that was needed.

The uncle sighed, his gaze drawn to the ceiling. He fiddled a moment longer with his cup before waving a hand towards them. "Fine. Go. But I'll have Marshall stay with you. No complaints," he added even before Neil could frown. "He'll drive you, stay with you, and make sure you don't get your goddamn neck snapped."

Neil clicked his tongue, turning his frown upon the bodyguard standing at the door. He shared a glance with Andrew, and Andrew shrugged a shoulder. A guard wasn't necessary, not when Andrew would stand at Neil's back to ward off any possible threat anyway, but he wouldn't complain. Not yet. It was enough to be free of the uncle for a time.

The car ride to the stadium was taken in silence, the guard—Marshall—close-lipped until they climbed out. Only when Neil piled from the back seat and immediately made for the court did Marshall step in front of him and hold up a hand.

"Don't make this hard for me, alright?" he said in a tone that spoke of having said those exact words before.

At Neil's faint pursing of lips, the man raised his eyebrows pointedly. "Do me a solid, would you? You don't need to bugger off every chance you get anymore. Tone it down a bit."

Neil clicked his tongue again and Andrew swallowed a smirk. It wasn't really a reply—except that it kind of was. He followed in step with Neil as he gave a curt nod, skirting around the man and making for the court once more.

Wymack didn't appear surprised at their arrival. Neil's pause in his single-minded mission towards the locker room was brief; he waited in the doorway of Wymack's office long enough for Wymack to notice them.

Glancing up from his desk, Wymack gave a slight nod of greeting before gesturing at Neil. "Why am I not surprised you're here so early?" he asked but didn't await a reply. With another gesture down the hallway he added, "The court's yours, kid."

Neil didn't need a further offer. Without a glance towards Andrew or another spared for Wymack, he all but ran for the locker rooms. Andrew watched him disappear through the doorway, turning back to Wymack only at the sound of his clearing throat.

Wymack's gesture was a little more direct this time. "You care to explain that?"

Andrew blinked at him silently.

Wymack tapped a finger on the top of his desk. "You're going to be a chatty pair now, aren't you?" He grunted to himself. "I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse."

Andrew didn't reply. He'd barely spoken a word in weeks and didn't see any reason to change that now. Turning from Wymack, he followed in Neil's wake. Marshall had similarly already followed suit, only at a far more reserved pace than Andrew considered would usually be deemed appropriate for any kind of guard. He had that to be thankful for at least.

Within the locker rooms, Neil was geared up only to the bare minimum. Andrew was vaguely impressed that he'd been able to throw himself into it so quickly, though less so that he had become stuck at the second to last step. Standing in the middle of the room, his gaze downcast, Neil seemed nothing if not captivated by the racquet in his hand. His fingers, lacing through the netting, trembled faintly, and at any other moment Andrew would have snorted and scolded him for being the fool that he was.

It was hard, though. Somehow, it was hard to think to do anything but linger in silent company.

Minutes ticked past, broken only by Neil's intermittent thick swallows, the adjustment of his fingers in the netting, upon the racquet, grasping his stick as though it were a lifeline. Andrew let it continue until it stretched into the territory of being ridiculously long before shaking himself from his own stupor and making for his locker. It had been weeks since he'd touched it, and longer since he'd done so utterly willingly.

By the time he'd outfitted himself in similarly minimal gear, hefting his racquet and adjusting to the familiarity of its weight, Neil had managed to clamber from the depths of his pondering. He watched Andrew with a gaze so familiar, the question so loud yet always unspoken, that Andrew raised an eyebrow. With deliberately slow, pronounced gestures, he spelled out W-H-A-T.

Neil's gaze followed his movements and for a moment he looked nothing if not surprised. It was so easy to read that it was uncanny, and even more so because Andrew knew Neil as one so wary of revealing his thoughts. A moment later and the slightest tilt touched the corners of his lips. Propping his racquet against his shoulder, he raised his hands, fingers splayed, and gestured in such a clear indication of the similar askance that, had Andrew bothered, he would have surely guessed the sign himself.

He nodded his understanding, then gave a slight frown. It only served to call forth that faint smile, barely there, tugging at Neil's lips once more. Andrew hated it. He longed to kiss it away, to taste the amusement that had been stolen from him for months. It was worth Neil's delight at his supposed enthusiasm for exy to see it.

He didn't move across the room, however, and Neil finally gave a one-shouldered shrug in reply. _Nothing_. Andrew understood that one too, just as he understood it for the pathetic lie it was. With a huff, he crossed the room towards the door, pausing only long enough to gesture through it with a tip of his head. Neil followed instantly.

With a bucket of balls retrieved from the storage closet, they made their way out onto the court. It echoed with every footstep, resoundingly empty, yet Wymack had flicked the lights to illuminate the scene well enough. Andrew didn't pause as Neil stuttered to a stop. He could all but feel Neil's longing for what was already in his grasp, for what he'd seen only the day before.

Andrew kicked the door into the inner court open, making his way towards the goal, and the sound of Neil catching up wasn't long in following. Dropping the bucket to the ground on his way, Andrew slung his racquet over his shoulder and planted himself in the centre of the goal. When he turned to Neil once more, it was to find him stationed beside the bucket of balls still wearing the expression of longing.

Andrew did roll his eyes this time. Lowering his racquet, he beckoned Neil towards him before dropping into a position of readiness. It was perhaps the first time he'd ever done so from the outset, the first time he'd chosen to himself without the threat of a coach or a game hanging over him, but the weight of that realisation was barely noticeable to Andrew. There were, for the moment, more important things to consider.

Like Neil and his damned pining that persisted even as he scooped up the first ball. Even as he threw himself into the simple act of practice like his life depended upon it.

The stiffness of morning, unshed by any proper stretching, was soon washed aside by the heat of motion. For the first time in weeks, Andrew focused his attention upon exy, upon playing, but more importantly upon his opponent. It wasn't possible to draw his gaze from Neil in the first place; blocking his shots was barely an extra effort on top of it.

Neil was fast, that much was apparent. Still fast, and Andrew saw the signs that he'd maintained his stamina despite his absence. Yet the rest—the rustiness of the rest called forth a steadily rising wave of frustration that grew more and more apparent with each passing shot.

Time and lack of practice had left its mark. Not outstandingly, but it was there. Kevin would likely be frothing at the mouth moments before he became invigorated with the righteous urge to fix the damage.

Somehow, Andrew managed to lose himself to the moment. To the ball, the racquet, and Neil darting across the court before him. It was so painfully familiar, as if no time had passed at all, that for a time it was possible to forget reality, to disregard months of suspension and bated breath. Andrew blocked, threw himself after the ball, rebounded each shot with a shoulder-wrenching strike, and it felt somehow right.

Only when the deafening bang of the plexiglass door opening interrupted them was Andrew shaken free. Straightening, he glanced across the court in time to see Nicky making a beeline for Neil. He put his own performance in the game to shame with his speed.

"Neil!" burst from him belatedly, tearing loose as he threw himself around Neil and almost bowled him over. As Andrew took an instinctive step towards him, he watched Nicky all but lift Neil off his feet with the tightness of his embrace, crushing him against him. "Oh my god, you're here! Oh my god—"

Andrew, silently lowering his racquet, watched as Nicky managed to tear himself free for long enough to paw at Neil's helmet, wrenching it loose. Somehow, Neil managed to clamber free of his hold enough to unclasp it himself. It clattered to the floor as Nicky clutched at him again, cradling his face, patting his head, and all but sobbing.

"Oh my god," he repeated like a mantra. "Oh my—you're really—I can't believe you're finally—" His hands seemed compulsive as they wiped at Neil's sweaty bangs, grazing along the scars on his cheeks only a little more gently. "Oh my god."

Neil didn't protest. It was likely because he verbally couldn't, but he didn't actively take a step away from Nicky as Andrew half expected him to either. He bore the brunt of Nicky's sobbing with close-mouthed restraint, and only a glance over Nicky's shoulder as Andrew slowly approached gave him away. Andrew wondered if he imagined the long-suffering sigh conveyed in Neil's gaze. He doubted it.

Nonetheless, when Nicky returned to wrapping his arms around him, Neil still didn't pull away. Rather, almost tentatively, he raised his arms to give an awkward embrace in return.

"We've all been so worried about you." Nicky's words were muffled against Neil's shoulder pads. "I know I shouldn't have thought the worst, but when shit like that happens—and we didn't know where you were and—Jesus, you're back. It's so good to have you back."

If not in quite the same words, for once Andrew found he entirely agreed with Nicky.

* * *

"What I want to know," Allison said, "is how long you two have been together."

That, if nothing else, slowed Andrew's step. He didn't quite pause as they crossed the carpark and only glanced at Neil sidelong without turning to shoot Allison a glare over his shoulder.

Barely a week. It had taken only seven days of a trembling attempt to return to normalcy before someone had to intrude upon business that wasn't their own.

Those days had been a whirlwind that somehow seemed nothing but overlaps of silence dotted by intrusive questions. Neil had been all but pinned to Andrew's side—he wouldn't have it any other way with the uncle and the bodyguard lingering in town—and that necessitated being at the court more often than not.

Kevin came. He trained. He despaired of Neil's rustiness only long enough for Neil to shoot him a pointed glance and offer a pointed jab of his racquet his way. It said more than enough of exactly how he felt of Kevin's disappointment, which only succeeded in having Kevin launch himself into smoothing the roughened edges.

Nicky had ceased to be a rabid mess of relief and joy and joined them most hours. Aaron too, though with less mess and far less joy, though Andrew suspected he wasn't nearly as nonchalant as he pretended to be.

The rest of the team seemed to fall into place as though they had a preestablished routine. As if Neil hadn't appeared in their midst as though teleported, one moment absent and the next sliding back into place like a perfectly fitting key. There were little things, little changes that Andrew noticed because they were impossible to ignore—Dan's keen eye on Neil more than the rest of her team, Matt's frequent need to pat Neil on the shoulder each time he walked past, how Allison spoke to him far more than she ever had before despite receiving only minimal replies—but largely it was the same.

Eerily the same. Painfully the same, and Andrew was still rocked by just how completely his plummeting fall seemed to have been reeled back in. He shouldn't tolerate it, but it wasn't possible to grasp what was his, what had been his even when he couldn't touch it, every chance he got.

At Allison's question, Neil paused in their journey across the carpark and turned towards her. It was only then that Andrew did so too, and as he turned to Allison, he saw she noticed the distinction. She was as sharp as her eyeliner and made a point of letting the world know it. Freshly scrubbed from their morning practice, she reeked of nosy curiosity as much as she did her perfume.

"Allison, lay off," Dan said, though Andrew didn't think she sounded particularly sincere. That she and the rest of the team had all stopped in the middle of the carpark was indication enough.

Allison folded her arms. Tipping her chin at Andrew, she affixed Neil with her attention. " _He's_ not going to tell me anything, so I'm asking Neil. Come on. Help us clean up some bets."

Andrew eyed her flatly, but he didn't speak anymore than Neil did. There was no need to; there rarely was these days.

"What's this?" Nicky said with uncharacteristic wariness.

"Don't play dumb, Hemmick," Allison said. "They're fucking."

Andrew ignored Nicky's sharp glance. "I mean," Nicky began, paused, then cleared his throat. "We don't know for _sure._ "

Aaron made a muffled sound that Andrew ignored. Sharing a glance with Renee, Andrew half turned back to his car before catching sight of Neil pulling his phone from his pocket.

"You don't have to tell us anything if you don't want to," Renee said as Neil typed.

"Don't give them a backdoor, Renee," Allison said.

"Look, it's not our business," Matt said, his hand reaching for Neil's shoulder as it so often did. "But even I'm curious."

"You're right, it's _not_ our business," Dan echoed emphatically, with the silent 'but' tacked onto her words.

"For fuck's sack," Aaron muttered.

"Does it matter?" Kevin asked, shaking himself from his stillness and passing Andrew with strides a little heavier than usual.

 _No,_ Andrew thought. _And it's not anyone else's business._ He was as surprised, however, as surprised as it was possible to feel in the face of the entirely unremarkable antics of the team, that they'd managed to withhold their questions for as long as they had. The Foxes weren't known for their tactfulness, despite Abby throwing the blanket statement "leave Neil alone" over the lot of them the day after he'd arrived.

Andrew didn't care what they thought. He didn't care what impressions he gave, that from the frowns and narrowed gazes as he accompanied Neil from the stadium every day it was clear that whatever the perception of their relationship was that they didn't approve. It really wasn't anyone's business but his and Neil's. Nonetheless, he eyed Neil's phone screen absently as he typed out a reply.

Communal phones buzzed with the incoming message a moment later. A group message, a Fox message, that had become the primary mode of communication between the team when Neil was involved. When he couldn't reply with a nod, a shrug, a shake of his head, or one of the smattering of signs that the Foxes were picking up with the readiness of a child receiving gifts at Christmas, he resorted to texting. It was a longer process, even with Neil's new phone and the practiced adeptness of his fingers, but it sufficed.

Andrew didn't draw his own phone. Instead, he watched Neil's face and the slight smile he wore, a smile that he never used to wear but Andrew had come to interpret wasn't so much a smile as a 'I'm telling you to fuck off in the nicest way I know how'.

Matt snorted as he read the text. Dan eyed Neil with a smirk. Renee's chuckle was barely audible, and she patted Allison's shoulder as Allison huffed and shot Neil a glare, tapping her phone against her hand.

"You didn't tell us your whole life story," Allison said with clear reference to the text Andrew hadn't seen. "Just the exciting bits. And even so, that's beside the point of all," she gestured at Andrew and Neil respectively with a point of her phone, "this."

"So this is a thing?" Nicky asked, staring at Andrew with wide eyes that flicked only briefly to Neil. "I thought, but—I mean, you never said—"

"Of course they never said," Allison interrupted. "Neither of them ever say anything at all."

"Yeah, but—I mean, since when-?"

"That's what I'd like to know."

"It's really none of our business if it happened, you know, before Neil left or after, or…" Dan's statement trailed off with a suggestive curiosity that Andrew didn't care for.

"You don't have to share, but I'm kind of curious too," Matt said once more.

From the corner of his eye, Andrew could see Aaron eyeing him with an intensity that had been building over the past week and only now seemed to have defined itself. He ignored it, watching Neil instead. Neil still wore his little 'fuck off' smile, completely unfazed by the Foxes as they continued to speak over and around him as much as to him. He was more lenient than Andrew would have thought him capable of. Maybe he was as unseeingly changed as the rest of the team.

Neil caught Andrew's stare, however, and without a need to confer they both turned and followed after Kevin towards the car.

"That wasn't a proper answer, Neil," Allison called after then, but Neil only shot her a glance over his shoulder without turning and flashed his 'fuck off' smile again.

Kevin stood alongside the car, shoulders slightly hunched and arms folded. Andrew thought maybe he had the good sense to hold his tongue for once, but as they piled within he couldn't help but say, "I don't care what you do, just so long as it doesn't cause trouble."

It was the vaguest, most blanketing and most pointless statement he could have said. Andrew didn't even spare him a roll of his eyes and instead, caught by the movement of Neil's hands, turned towards him.

 _"_ _Does it annoy you?"_ Neil asked.

Andrew was piecing signs together like fragments of a puzzle. It wasn't a stretch to weave together those he'd collected in a miserly hoard over the past week. He shook his head.

 _"_ _I don't care what they think or say,"_ he signed in reply, a slow process but infinitely less taxing than speaking into the perfect silence of the car.

 _"_ _Lying,"_ Neil replied. He'd used the gesture enough that Andrew knew it on sight.

_"_ _Don't ask questions you don't want to see the answer to then."_

_"_ _I'm giving you the opportunity to protest if you want to."_

_"_ _I don't care."_

_"_ _Even _?"_

"Are we going to be here all day?" Kevin muttered from the back seat, just loud enough that it clearly wasn't spoken to himself.

Andrew still didn't spare him a glance. The signing was slow-going at times, what with Andrew's fragmented learning and Neil only a few months ahead of him, but it wasn't outstandingly slow. Except in instances where Andrew didn't recognise a word.

 _"_ _What does _ mean?"_ he signed, mimicking the shape of Neil's fingers. It was a foreign little point of his fingers and tap of his hands that he hadn't come across before, he was sure. He would remember it.

"A-A-R-O-N," Neil replied, and Andrew understood. Rather than spelling out their names each time he mentioned them, he had quickly adopted shortcuts for each of the Foxes. From distinct signs themselves—Dan assuming prime place of 'D' and Wymack simply 'Coach'—to shapes that Andrew's exploration into the internet had found were just signless gestures, each seemed to have their assigned sign names. He hadn't realised Aaron hadn't been mentioned until then.

Humming neutrally in reply, Andrew clicked the key into the ignition and gunned it to life. He didn't want to talk about Aaron. He rarely wanted to consider him at all beyond the simple fact that he existed and Andrew had a promise to keep to him. He didn't miss Neil's sign out of the corner of his eye, however.

_"_ _You're going to have to speak to him eventually."_

Andrew wasn't so sure about the inevitability that Neil suggested. He was perfectly fine with leaving his brother as an annoying and occasionally objectionable fly upon the wall.

_"_ _If you don't sort out what's between the two of you then the whole team will suffer. I won't let the season fall again."_

Andrew didn't know every gesture that Neil signed but he could piece them together. He could draw conclusions. Andrew rocked his head towards him, eyeing him lazily in a stare he knew Neil would understand. Neil stared back at him unblinkingly, ignoring Kevin's unintelligible mutter from the back as the engine mummed beneath them almost inaudibly.

Neil had returned and slotted back into place like he'd never disappeared. He was different but still the same, and Andrew hated that. He hated how the frozen cogs of the Foxhole Court suddenly seemed to become animated once more, as though rust had been scrubbed clear and wheels had been oiled into perfect newness.

Andrew hated that Neil fixed everything with his simple presence, but more than that, how he actively pushed for change. He hated even more how, when it came down to it, if Neil asked him in that godawful way that he did, the way that expected nothing and would accept disagreement if it was returned to him, Andrew knew he would follow.

 _"_ _Stop it,"_ Andrew signed, a gesture that was already practiced in his hands.

Neil's barely-there smile appeared once more. _"I'm not doing anything,"_ he replied.

Andrew scoffed, grasping the steering wheel with a tighter hold than he expressly needed to as he pressed the pedal to the floor and shot them from the parking lot in a skipping heartbeat. Not anything? Nothing? Neil had never been passive in his life and Andrew doubted he was likely to start now.

* * *

The uncle glared at Neil as he listened to the voicemail. It was his second time through, and Andrew could tell a repeat rendition wasn't instilling any further confidence in him. A third time, shortly following cessation of the second, didn't either.

Finally, with a wordless grumble, the uncle lowered the phone. "I'm not happy with this," he said.

Neil shrugged. _So?_ Andrew heard even without the sign. He didn't even know if a sign for such a pronouncement existed. Maybe that was simply the purpose of a shrug in the first place. He mentally jotted down the need to look it up.

Without waiting for him to continue, Neil held his hand out for his phone. The phone that, to Andrew's knowledge, held the seal to his contract. Neil had written—because signing such a lengthy explanation would have taken all day and much fingerspelling—of his correspondence with the Moriyama lackeys. The men under a yakuza boss, criminals and crime lords, that dealt in the money game and squeezed every last drop from their victims with merciless intent.

Neil was a fool. A fucking fool for tying himself to them. He would get his head truly cut off one day if he wasn't careful, a trait that had always been impossible for him.

The uncle tapped the phone in his hands for a moment, eyeing Neil with a narrowed gaze, before slowly handing it to him. "This is madness," he muttered. "If Mary knew…"

Neil's shrug was different this time, but it was enough that the uncle, forever tightly wound and watchful, seemed to deflate slightly. Andrew watched, arms folded but attentive, as the man's shoulders dropped slightly and he drew his gaze over his shoulder. The rest of the parking lot outside of Fox Tower was empty of students and only modestly speckled with cars.

"I promised to keep you safe, Nathaniel," he finally said. "Even if you didn't want to be."

"You did," Neil signed, Joanna at his side speaking his words as soon as he said them.

"You're tied with a goddamn mob boss," the uncle said, though there was no heat to his words. "That's as far from successful safekeeping as you can possibly be."

"You tried," Neil replied, and Andrew watched his hands more than he heard Joanna's words this time. "You can't protect me from the world. Not this time."

 _You won't have to,_ Andrew thought in a silent promise of his own. He flicked his gaze to Neil's face where he watched his uncle with an openness and calmness that Andrew hadn't seen of him in the scant weeks of his return. They'd been heated, at one another's throats, and arguing at any whisper of a word whether it intentionally incited argument or not. The lack of ferocity and resistance was telling, particularly in the uncle.

 _He's given up the fight._ For once, Andrew didn't think less of his opponent by standing down.

"I'll be watching," the uncle said. He set his shoulders, raising his resigned gaze to Neil once more. "And listening."

Neil nodded.

"You call me, do you hear? I want regular updates."

Neil nodded again, if less readily this time. The uncle seemed to see the hesitancy too.

"I mean it, Nathaniel." He raised his eyebrows. "You're still one of mine, whether you like it or not. Whether you want to be or not."

Neil's nod this time was slow again, but the hesitancy was replaced with regretful resignation. Always a fight. Always striving to do it alone. Andrew almost rolled his eyes.

The uncle muttered something under his breath. He shifted in place, gaze drawn to his feet, to Joanna, back across the parking lot again. It was almost strange to consider him a criminal and a threat in his own right, though Andrew had long ago abandoned the inclination to assume anyone wasn't worth thinking the worst of. Nonetheless, he gave off the impression of nothing if not a concerned uncle.

Perhaps he even was, just a little. A concerned uncle flying to the other side of the world and leaving his nephew in the jaws of a shark.

With a final sigh, the uncle eyed Neil once more in a silent study. Then, with a nod, he turned on his heel and strode towards the polished rental humming quietly across the lot. His bodyguard spared Neil a glance of his own, a tip of his head that could have been a farewell but went unacknowledged, and followed after him.

Joanna was a little slower to follow.

"Well," she said, turning towards Neil with her placid, unremarkable smile, "it's been a time, hasn't it?"

Neil eyed her sidelong. His nod was somehow cautious.

Joanna's smile carried the kind of warmth that Renee could manage on a good day; carefree and forgiving, a smile that didn't ask for anything and had no expectations. Somehow, when she signed in rapid succession, too fast for Andrew to discern some of the words, that warmth carried.

Something about 'thank you,' and 'take care'. Something else about 'health' and 'happiness'. A mention of 'keeping in touch' that had Neil making a face and Joanna laughing as though his clear dissent didn't offend her. She was needlessly happy, inexplicably good-humoured, and Andrew couldn't understand it. Whether a threat or not, he wouldn't regret her disappearance any less than the uncle's; mysteries could be dangerous, even—or especially—seemingly benign ones.

Andrew didn't trust her. No one so tied to the criminal underworld could be completely guiltless and oblivious.

She left. With a slight trot in her step, Joanna followed after the uncle and slid into the back seat of his car. The rental eased into motion a moment later, and Andrew watched through impregnably tinted windows as the last of the vultures hanging protectively over Neil's shoulder peeled away.

Neil watched them go and Andrew watched Neil. He watched the slight frown, the barest downward tilt of his lips, and the unblinking detachedness of his gaze that said he wasn't really seeing the emptiness in the place of his uncle's car but something else. Andrew resisted the urge to ask. It was always more interesting to unravel Neil's thoughts without being explicitly told them.

Finally, as the evening heat actually began to lessen, Neil shook himself from his stupor. He glanced at Andrew with a slight raise of his eyebrow. _"You're still here?"_ he signed, and something about the quirk and shape of his signs seemed faintly amused.

Andrew did roll his eyes this time. With a tilt of his head, he turned and led the way back into the tower. He didn't slow as he noticed Kevin waiting just inside the doors, peering through the glass like a watchdog unable to twist the handle himself. Andrew passed him without a glance as they entered the lobby, but he caught sight of a hand darting out to grab Neil's shoulder and paused in step.

"You're really staying, then?" Kevin asked, something almost like a warble touching his words. "You're able to stay?"

Neil nodded. He didn't explain that he'd been all but ordered to, not as he'd explained to Andrew. Maybe that would come with time, or maybe Neil was simply withholding what didn't need to be said. For now, at least. Andrew suspected Kevin would have a little more to say about his own name being on the contract when it fully sunk in. Neil had signed their futures away in a perfectly messy bundle that seemed to nothing if not unduly satisfy him.

Kevin released a breath as though he were exhaling for the first time in weeks. He momentarily hung his head, eyes closing, before he was able to shake himself into a semblance of order. "We'll have to prepare for this. For what it will mean with the media, with you returning and the story of your family. It will be impossible to keep under wraps. You'll be in the firing line as the most exciting thing to happen in the NCAA, to say the least."

Neil nodded again, paused, then shook his head instead. Then, extracting himself out from Kevin's hold, he retrieved his phone and typed out a quick message. Andrew folded his arms, watching and silently waiting for them to finish. Whatever was said between them, if it was important for him to know then Neil would tell him. They'd agreed upon that much in a recent promise. If it wasn't important… he'd likely find out soon enough, but he didn't care to know anyway.

Whatever Neil had written, whatever words on the screen he turned towards Kevin, wiped all colour from Kevin's face. He swallowed convulsively, wide eyes switching between Neil and the phone screen.

"My father," he croaked, a question or an aborted statement, or perhaps something else entirely.

Andrew regarded him flatly. There was a story there to be sure. A story between Neil and Kevin that he wasn't party to. Maybe he'd pick that one apart himself rather than leaving it to unravel itself.

Neil didn't elaborate with more than a pointed glance before taking himself to Andrew's side. With a final glance at Kevin, standing with his shoulders hunched and face increasingly wan, Andrew turned and kept pace with him as they climbed the stairs of the tower. He couldn't help but watch Neil sidelong, however, and in spite of the moment with Kevin and the feeling of horror he'd apparently inflicted, Neil looked utterly content. Happy, even.

 _"What?"_ Andrew signed before he could remind himself that he didn't really care.

Neil glanced at him with the faintest of smiles on his lips. With a small sign, barely a sign at all, he said, _"I'm free."_

Andrew scoffed. He doubted Neil would ever truly be free, but he'd make sure he had as much chance as the choking leash he wore allowed him. He'd swear it.

 _"Junkie,"_ he replied in a sign that he'd made up himself. Neil's smile was a little wider this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it was a bit of a delay to get this chapter out. I hope you enjoyed it! As always, I thrive of comments and would love to hear your thoughts <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter contains use of ableist language. It's used in an unfavourable light but please be wary if you find this triggering.

Sleeping in a bed that wasn't his own had become so familiar that it had almost lost its discomfort. Waking to find Neil's lips bare inches from his own and losing minutes and hours in touches and warmth helped with that.

The hazy grey of morning hadn't fully breached the interior of their room when Andrew awoke. The summer heat was similarly held at bay, and in the unremarkably plain blankets nesting around them, Andrew urged his muscles to wakefulness with those touches and that warmth, with kisses and wisps of breath that he swallowed as he chased Neil's lips, as he breathed into his neck and inhaled the sleepy scent of him.

The bed wasn't wholly comfortable, but it was close enough _._ Silence permeated their bubble of closeness, and Andrew was content to leave it that way.

Remarkably, despite maintaining his silence, Neil managed to break it.

 _"_ _We should get up before Kevin does,"_ he signed, the gestures sharply defined in the thin ray of light that had managed to creep through the blinds.

Andrew grunted wordlessly, a neutral reply but as much of an acknowledgement as they both needed. It had become a silently acknowledged agreement between them that they would avoid Kevin's pained gaze whenever he glanced their way. He'd only mentioned the risk their relationship becoming public could be "especially on top of everything else" before Neil had deflected him with the reminder "you need to tell your father" in a pointedly brief text message. Andrew had only seen the receipt of the message, but he hadn't felt the need to ask further; the truth would reveal itself with time and any slight strengthening of Kevin's spine.

That didn't stop Kevin from eyeing them with silent reprimand, however. It was to such a degree that Andrew was almost, almost encouraged to take his leave from any situation that elicited his judgement. It simply wasn't worth the time and energy to ignore him.

Even so, even with the threat of Kevin's silent reprimand hanging over his shoulder, Andrew didn't move. Neil didn't push him to either. Instead, he settled for staring across the narrow distance between them, holding Neil's gaze. It still unsettled him how much he could discern from his eyes. How much more he could discern than he previously had, though Neil's eyes had always been telling. He simply hadn't fully understood what they'd been trying to say before.

With Neil's silence, that he rarely opened his mouth beyond returning Andrew's kisses, it had become a necessity. As valuable as any spoken word.

In Neil's stare, Andrew could make out the silent encouragement. He could hear what was less words and more a general radiating energy that oozed with eagerness for practice, an enthusiasm that never abated in spite of what was nothing short of a monotonously consistent schedule. He saw the flicker of shrewd consideration that arose when Wymack mentioned speaking to the university faculty, to the media representatives and the counsellors of the NCAA, and the touch of concern that he visibly swallowed whenever Dan brought up their readiness for the new season.

It was just around the corner. A bare handful of weeks before the beep of the first match sounded. Andrew wasn't sure how he felt, but he wouldn't deny to himself that he'd thought about it often enough. It was impossible not to with how many hours a day he spent with a racquet in his hands. So many hours that summer that it was almost strange to see his own hands uncurled anymore.

Andrew's attention was returned to Neil's own hands as he signed once more. _"Coach said he'd have the new freshman at the doors by nine. It would be good to practice for a bit before that."_

Andrew frowned. _"Coach texted you?"_ he signed in reply.

It wasn't entirely surprising but still unexpected. Neil had accepted his role as vice captain despite his absence of the finishing months of their season with less resistance than Andrew would have considered him capable of. If nothing else, it left him suspecting that he'd already been pitted the idea and had acclimatised himself to the inevitably of it. Or perhaps the return of his beloved sport after such an extended interim had him readily accepting any opportunity to play again.

At Andrew's question, Neil nodded. _"He's been particularly upfront lately. He messages me what he sends to Dan."_

 _"_ _Naturally,"_ Andrew replied with one of his most used signs.

Neil's lips twitched, but he didn't reply until Andrew kissed his smirk away. _"I'm hoping Kevin can blow off some steam before they arrive. He still complains about that striker every chance he gets."_

 _"_ _So?"_ Andrew replied with a shrug and a vague gesture.

_"_ _I don't want to deal with his bullshit. It's better to put him in a good mood early."_

Andrew snorted, eyeing Neil's hands as they danced around themselves in conversation. They were scarred in patchy pink and white, more skin stained with the echo of burns and slashes of a knife than was left untouched, but he'd grown to appreciate them since Neil's return. Not as Neil did, with his distinct flexing of fingers every so often as though reminding himself he could still clench his fist through the damage, but in the same way he did Neil's eyes.

His hands spoke, and when they did it was in a tone eerily similar to that Neil's voice had held.

Before Andrew's stare, however, Neil tucked his fingers upon themselves, an instinctive retraction of speech and visibility. He'd taken to doing such a gesture more often, and though Andrew knew it wasn't a sign in itself—he'd checked just as he did every other unknown sign—it was an explanation in its own right. An admittance of discomfort, of what could have been embarrassment in someone that wasn't Neil. Andrew didn't know Neil to be embarrassed but he suspected the seemingly subconscious urge to hide his scarred hands from view was as close as he would ever get.

It was cruel, really. Scarred or not, Andrew had an appreciation for Neil's hands that he hadn't thought possible months before.

Watching Neil tuck them away, Andrew considered for a moment before pushing himself up from their nest of pillows and sheets. He paused as Neil gestured an incredulous _"You're getting up first?"_ before deliberately ignored it.

Instead, he slung himself over the side of the bed and made his way to the closet. By the time he'd filtered around inside to extract the buried package he'd purchased a full week before, Neil was sitting up, his legs hanging over the side. Andrew lobbed the package to him, and Neil snatched it out of the air reflexively.

 _"_ _What's this?"_ he signed, dropping the package into his lap to free his hands.

Andrew shrugged, turning back to the closet. Shrugs had become a useful gesture to him these days too. Even more useful than they had been.

He threw Neil only a glance as he left the room, just long enough to see him unwrapping the package with a frown. He ignored the silent query Neil shot his way as he passed to leave the room, swallowing the prickling agitation of _something_ that afflicted him as he left. It was easier to turn away from any kind of response, to deprive himself of seeing any reaction to what could to the untrained eye be seen as a gift.

When he returned, it was to see Neil already wearing the armbands he'd received, tugging absently at the ends that stretched far enough to cover part of his hands. He didn't glance up at Andrew as he entered, which was perhaps a good thing because the small smile that he wore, the unspoken words spelled out on his face, was…

Andrew's skin prickled with a different kind of agitation this time, one that didn't feel bad at all.

* * *

"If we try it immediately, there will be more of a chance to know what we're working with," Kevin said from the back of the car. "Better that they know the benchmark we're setting."

Andrew didn't glance to the passenger seat as Neil typed out a reply, but he guessed what he'd written even before Kevin confirmed it.

"No? What do you mean 'no'?" Kevin propped his arms on the shoulder of Andrew's seat just long enough for Andrew to land a sharp smack before hunching back into his seat. "Vice-captain or not, it's not your decision to make. You're still the least experienced person on the court, and even with your return to competency, you're not equipped to blindly direct a team of juveniles and delinquents. The freshmen will need a firm, experienced hand."

"It's way too early in the morning for you to be saying things like that, Kevin," Nicky said through a yawn.

"Shut up, Nicky," Aaron grumbled.

"I'm just saying. Kevin's the one who made the suggestive claims, not me. I'm just the interpreter."

Andrew was sure he wasn't the only one to roll his eyes, and not just at Kevin's words. He similarly wasn't the only one to hold his silence; a sidelong glance towards Neil found him staring detachedly through the windscreen as the cruised into the gym's parking lot. He didn't glance towards Kevin as he propped his arm on the shoulder of the passenger seat again, eyeing him with a frown.

Neil ignored him. Just like that. Just as he'd so rarely been capable of barely half a year before.

Neil had become remarkably accomplished at passive aggressive silences in a very short time. Andrew could almost admit he was impressed, especially given how short he knew Neil's temper was. Maybe texting out the length and breadth of his climactic tirades would simply take too long. It was a shame.

The upperclassmen were already pulled up before the doors of the gym, and Andrew was mildly surprised to find them lingering on the steps rather than waiting within the cooler interior. Yet a glance to one of only a handful of the other cars speckled through the parking lot was more than indication of why.

"Fuck," Kevin said as Andrew slammed on the breaks. He felt Aaron's hand thump the back of his seat, but he doubted it had anything more to do with his abrupt stop than Kevin's curse had been. Even so, he barely noticed it, his gaze trained upon the black Lexus and the four figures leaning against it like an attempted murder of crows perched in wait.

"What the fuck are they doing here?" Nicky whispered hoarsely.

"Fuck," Kevin repeated. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—"

Without glancing over his shoulder, Neil cuffed his head where it still hung between the front seats. Kevin cursed again under his breath, but it was more a feeble croak of desperation than the snap of anger he likely intended it to be. Andrew didn't spare him a glance.

The sight of the ravens tightened something in his gut that he hadn't thought so easily aggravated before. He didn't care that they'd won the previous season. Not really. He didn't care that they'd mocked and strutted, preaching of their superiority in the league and defaming the Foxes even without naming them explicitly.

"It was only a matter of time and barely any effort from our team to properly reaffirm what the league has always known," Riko had said months before, the arrogance of his self-assurance seeping through the television screen and hanging like a bad smell in the air as Kevin had despondently yet obsessively watched the playback. "For a time, I know some people thought that the lesser teams of this competition had a leg to stand on. I hope those people are more aware of the truth of the matter now. The throne has always borne the Ravens' name."

It was a show of flaunting and flexing, a peacock splaying its tail feathers in a ridiculous dance, yet the reporters had lapped it up just as the rest of the exy-loving world had. Andrew hadn't cared at the time, had so little interest in exy or the season they'd had to forfeit that he doubted he could have been less interested—

But that was then. This was now.

"Andrew," Kevin said, the desperation seeping into his tone more thickly this time. "Andrew, he can't… you won't let him…"

Andrew climbed his way out of the car before Kevin managed to complete his sentence. The slamming of doors and hurrying footsteps was indication enough of the rest of his family following suit, and he didn't need to glance towards the upperclassmen to know they were drawn towards them like wide-eyed moths fluttering towards a flame.

Andrew didn't wait for them to catch up before starting towards the Ravens. Towards Riko. Towards the flapping and sauntering fowl that radiated arrogance through a smirk visible from across the parking lot. Neil fell into step beside him, and he was vaguely aware of Renee doing the same on his other side. His fists itched at his sides and he deliberately uncurled them.

"Kevin," Riko called before they were within spitting distance. "It's about time you arrived. I wasn't aware Palmetto was so lax as to have you starting practice when the sun is nearly at its peak."

"You need your eyes checked if you think it's noon, Riko," Matt said from somewhere over Andrew's shoulder.

"I don't remember inviting you to the conversation, Boyd," Riko replied, flicking him a glance that was so disregarding it was barely a glance at all.

"What do you want, Riko?" Dan asked. Andrew glanced towards her only because she slid directly in front of her team, arms folded and feet planted in a stance grounded enough for a goal-keeper. "If you're just here to antagonise my team—"

"Antagonise?" Riko's laugh was an ugly thing, so jarringly feigned it was an assault to the ears. "Now, Wilds, why would I waste my time on such a thing? You're hardly worth the effort."

"And yet you came here uninvited," Allison said. "Why is that? You're on our grounds, in case you hadn't noticed."

"It's a little hard not to notice," one of the Ravens at Riko's side said, her lip curling so far it almost climbed up her nose. "The colour scheme is painful to even look at."

"Then clearly you have no taste in making an impression without snorting all over people," Allison retorted. "Besides, no one asked you to come here."

"That's alright," the other Raven said. "You're blessed with our presence for free this time."

"Hello, Jean," Renee said before Allison's hackles could rise even further, sparing Jean, the final member of their feeble party, a small smile. "Did you need something?"

Riko didn't shift his gaze from Kevin but he was the one to reply nonetheless. "You've been busy this summer, haven't you? Scheming, is it?" His smile was fixed, and Andrew suspected the fixture was all that held a scowl at bay. "Have you been sticking your thumb into pies that aren't yours, Kevin?"

Kevin's rigidity was so stony that Andrew could feel his quivering tension from behind him. "I didn't do anything, Riko."

"You spat in the face of your owners is what you did," Riko replied.

"Owners," Dan said through her teeth. "You're disgusting. No one owns him."

"Oh, but they do," Riko said. "His leash is just held by a different hand now." Cocking his head like a watchful bird, Riko narrowed his eyes at Kevin. "You didn't tell me, Kevin. Why is it that I'm only just now finding out?"

"Maybe you're not as important as you think you are?" Nicky said. "Climb down off that high horse—"

"Shut up," one of the other Ravens said. "Don't think to interrupt a conversation that isn't yours to participate in."

"Hey, you're the ones that brought the issue here." From the corner of his eye, Andrew saw Nicky raise both hands in mocking placation. "Throwing bullshit about owning and thumbs in pies. Not my fault you're having it out in an open parking lot where anyone can hear."

"He's right," Dan said, "which means you're either trying to start a fight or you came here for another reason." Tilting her chin higher, she was the picture of open defiance. "We have training to get to, Riko. Say what you want to say and leave before we don't give you the chance to even do that."

"My conversation is with Kevin," Riko said, his smile disappearing into a slashing glare. "It doesn't concern you."

"Anything to do with the Foxes concerns me," Dan said.

"This is about—"

"Kevin's contract, right? We already know it's no longer in Edgar Allen's hands. You don't even hold an extorted copy of it anymore." The smile in Dan's words was sharply defined. "Yeah, we know. Kevin's not yours and he never will be again."

Riko fell silent. The Ravens on either side of him were similarly so, Jean the only one to shift in place with the faintest show of unease. Face as flat and smooth as a statue, Riko slowly redirected his gaze back towards Kevin. The blankness of his expression was broken only by a stare so unblinkingly penetrating Andrew half expected Kevin to wither before it.

He didn't, which was something. Perhaps he'd finally come to accept the reality of what Neil had announced to the team.

It had been a long, winding explanation that took place over the course of weeks, and one that Andrew unravelled only a little faster at Neil's behest. But Neil told them all. He told them of his meeting with the head of the Moriyama family. He explained what he'd bargained for in words far simpler than the act itself could have possibly been. He described how his life and future was now tied to and all but forced onto the court, just as he wanted it to be, and that he'd thrown Kevin's chips on the table alongside his own.

Kevin had all but shattered after he'd been told. It had taken him nearly a week to stutter out a feeble attempt at gratitude through his relief.

What arose at the sight of Riko's mounting fury, at the knowledge that Riko had been kept in the dark on the situation until only recently—Andrew wouldn't have claimed he was happy, but it was almost enough to trigger a bout of genuine laughter. Foiling Riko was unutterably satisfying.

"What do you know?" Riko asked quietly, menacingly. He pushed himself off the car to take a step forward. "Kevin, what did you do?"

"Riko," Dan warned.

"I didn't do anything," Kevin said just as quietly.

"Now Kevin, why don't I believe you?" Riko said. "Contracts don't write themselves."

"It wasn't me," Kevin said, and even without turning towards him Andrew knew he shot a glance towards Neil. It was apparent by the way Riko's attention snapped towards him like a sighting hawk, settling upon Neil for the first time. Andrew's fists curled and he didn't bother to unclench them this time.

"Wesninski," Riko said. He made the word a sibilant hiss. "You managed to crawl your way back? Though not quite in one piece, I see."

Around them, Andrew felt the Foxes rear and all but toss their heads in mounting anger. There was something that had been born within the team, something hatched and growing only larger since Neil's return. It was something that Andrew had first seen but hadn't quite recognised from the moment that Neil had disappeared months before.

That something was apparent in the way Dan sidestepped smoothly in front of Neil, in how Andrew felt Matt shuffle forward and heard Allison mutter unheard words that nonetheless radiated hostility. It was felt in the way Kevin, despite his unshakeable terror, somehow steadied as Riko turned his attention upon Neil instead, or how the easy casualness of Nicky's stance immediately disappeared. Even Aaron seemed to harden, to steel himself slightly as though awaiting a blow he would willingly stand before.

Andrew knew Neil didn't need anyone to take the brunt of an attack upon him. Even so, he also knew the Foxes would stand before he got the chance to defend himself. Not that they would need to; Andrew was and always would already be on the front line.

"Yes," Renee said, the fastest to respond as she likely had the steadiest head. "We're lucky enough to have him back on our court. I'm sure the news headlines has already informed you of it."

"Indeed," Riko crowed. With a scoff, he shook his head. "Remarkable. You actually survived. Such a shame that your father didn't manage to cut your head off when he had the chance."

Like a match struck, the Foxes sparked alike. Andrew only just heard Kevin's sharp "Riko" beneath Allison's growl and Nicky's string of muttered abuse. "Oh, fuck off," Aaron said, echoing Dan's more vehement, "Go fuck yourself."

For Andrew, something within him snapped. For a split second his vision blanked. He saw Riko's head shattered beneath a blow his own fist was itching to strike, the smirk forever wiped off his face, and every muscle within him demanded him to make good his momentary clairvoyance.

Except that a second later his vision returned and he caught Neil's eye where he'd half turned towards him. Neil, who was nothing if not entirely composed and smiling faintly. When Neil raised his hands slightly, there was a query in his gaze, and Andrew was more than happy to nod in instant understanding.

"He tried," Andrew said. "It didn't stick."

His words managed to slice through the Foxes' imprecations. Perhaps it was because he so rarely spoke these days, or maybe it was the words themselves. Andrew didn't know. He didn't really care. Keeping one eye on Riko, he watched as Neil signed and continued to speak for him.

"A pity for you," Andrew said. "You'd better enjoy the feeling of victory while it lasts, because we'll be mopping the floor with you this coming season."

Silence. Nothing but silence hung between them. Andrew could feel eyes upon him, but he didn't spare any of them but Neil and Riko an ounce of his attention. There were only two people that mattered in that moment: one was far more important, but the other was amusing enough to watch as he crumpled before Neil's words.

Neil's words that Andrew could speak for him. It felt like the first real use he had for his voice in months.

"What's this?" Riko said, gaze darting between Andrew and Neil. "Are you-? _Oh_."

It took him a moment but understanding visibly dawned. He flashed his teeth in a wolfish grin that was more of a sneer. "We've heard all about the tragedy of the Butcher's son. Mute, isn't it? Such a shame to hear of your… damage. Is the psychopath speaking for the cripple now?"

"Fuck you," Aaron said, louder this time, but Andrew ignored his attempt at defence as he did the rest of the Foxes that similarly cursed.

"If that's the most inventive criticism you have, you need to build up your repertoire," Andrew said, echoing Neil's signs as they flowed fluidly through familiar gestures. "Psychopath and cripple? With a whole wealth of damning history between us, isn't attacking the shattered past and mangled family lives more effective?" Andrew clucked his tongue. "That's a feeble attempt, Riko."

He was expanding upon Neil's signs, the signs that somehow carried his tone and enunciation despite the immobility of his lips. Andrew didn't have a lifetime of practice in ASL to translate it fluently, and Neil was never quite as animated and expressive as the people in the videos on the internet, but he knew Neil. He _knew_ him. It was as though he spoke directly into his head, the barest smile upon his lips acknowledging Andrew's extrapolation and agreeing with it.

"I'm not talking to you, psycho," Riko said. "You're not part of this conversation."

"You're clearly even more stupid than you look," Andrew replied, both his own feelings and Neil's words. "I'm speaking for Neil. By all means, don't hold yourself back."

"You're not—"

"Unless you'd rather act like a real fool and completely ignore the majority of the conversation directed towards you." Andrew shrugged, folding his arms to hide his fists. "It's your choice."

Riko froze. The Ravens at his sides quivered, all but thrumming in their vicarious indignation, and Jean all but trembled as his eyes darted between them. Andrew could feel the Foxes all but holding their breaths around them but didn't spare them a lick of his attention; his entirety was reserved for Neil and for the thorn that had for long been sticking in their mutual sides.

"I never liked you," Riko said, more mildly than his frozen expression suggested was felt. "Either of you. You disgust me."

"Which one of us more?" Neil asked through Andrew. "I'm curious, but mostly just so we can settle a disagreement between us."

Riko's lips thinned. "You've always had more confidence than your skills and capacity deemed rightfully yours, Nathaniel. Step back before you hurt yourself. You don't know what you're dealing with."

"Don't I?"

"You think you dodged away from Edgar Allen's grasp? You're still bound to the Ravens."

"I think you'll find I'm not. Should you see your brother, ask him to clarify with the contract we mutually signed." Neil's smile widened fractionally. "Though given how he thinks of you, I doubt you'll have much of an opportunity. Have you ever actually met him in person? He's got quite a presence, hasn't he?"

"Neil," Kevin said lowly, his gaze darting from Neil and his dancing hands, to Andrew. He wore an expression that Andrew supposed was meant to be silencing but Andrew barely spared it a glance. He wouldn't say that speaking for Neil made him happy, and it wasn't exactly fun… but seeing Riko pale slightly, hearing Neil's words through his signs and speaking them as he remembered as much as he saw…

It threw him back, and Andrew didn't think he'd felt more alive in years.

"Not that it would matter even if you did see the contracts," Neil continued. "This goes higher than you, Riko. Out of your league." Another minute widening of Neil's smile as he cocked his head and signed in an almost spiteful snap of his fingers. "How does it feel?"

Riko took a step forward, sharp and all but looming as his short-stature ballooned with mounting rage. Andrew didn't move. He didn't need to, the Foxes rearing to attention in smooth motions. Dan stepped the rest of the way in front of Neil, Matt appearing at her side, and Andrew felt Renee, felt Aaron and Nicky and even Allison, cinch around them like a wall of wolves with teeth bared.

Not that it was needed. Not that he cared. Neither did Neil, evidently, as he stared Riko down and continued with a deliberate, "How does it feel to lose not just one of your toys but three, Riko?"

Riko, pinned in place by the Foxes' defensiveness, froze with the fragility of chipped ice. His eye twitched as he flicked his gaze from Andrew to Neil. "What did you just say?"

Dan, still frowning and glaring at once, shot Neil a glance over her shoulder. "What's this?" she asked. "What does that mean?"

Andrew knew Neil hadn't told them. He'd gleaned from Neil's conversations with Kevin alone, from the conversations he hadn't been directly party to but simply aware of for being in the vicinity and deliberately _aware_ of, what Neil referred to. He knew about Jean where the other Foxes had likely only heard the same whispers of his transfer from Edgar Allen that the rest of the world had.

It had been exciting—or at least Andrew had assumed it was rather than feeling it himself. The Foxes had been as invigorated as the rest of the exy-loving world, their speculations ringing through the backrooms of the stadium with suspicion and, in some instances, relief.

"I'm just glad he's managed to pave his own way a little," Renee had said.

None had thought to ask Neil, and only Dan to question Kevin. At the time, Kevin himself hadn't even known; it was only his own open speculation in the isolation of the court late that night that had revealed the reason behind Jean's transfer at all.

Andrew didn't care but it was amusing to watch Riko's skin itch.

"You," Riko said quietly. "You stole…" He trailed off for a moment, and Andrew suspected it was only Dan acting as a barrier between them that prevented him launching himself at Neil. "What did you do?"

Neil was slow to reply. He contemplated Riko, and Andrew could see the itch beneath Riko's skin mount to something more. He could hear the unspoken _'three'_ that formed on Riko's lips as comprehension dawned. "What did you do?" he snapped again, lips all but invisible in their tightness. He shot Jean a glance that had Jean swallowing almost violently before swinging his attention back to Neil.

Neil shrugged, a sign in itself, before Andrew spoke his real signs. "We'll look forward to facing you on the court, Riko. Rest assured you won't win a second time. Not now. We're stronger than ever and we will crush you."

It was Neil's words but somehow, maybe just a little, Andrew felt it. He _felt_ it. He still didn't care for exy beyond a vague blur of a distraction. He still didn't care for the competition. But he felt it nonetheless, and even more so with the way Riko all but writhed with the challenge pitted to him.

He clearly wasn't the only one. From his periphery, Andrew could make out Dan's fierce grin as she stared down the Ravens. He heard Nicky chuckle behind him, his muttered, "Damn, Neil," nothing if not affectionate. Something about the words, about Neil's words, seemed to add an extra inch or two of height to each of their shoulders, and in the face of the riled Ravens it was nothing if not enough for Riko to take a step back.

Whether he was cowed or not, Andrew didn't know, but it was enough. It was gloriously enough, yet Neil, ever the antagonist, gestured once more. "Take care," Andrew said, unable to help but roll his eyes. "Don't trip and fall on your way back to your nest as you scurry home, little—"

He paused, frowned, and repeated the unfamiliar sign back at Neil. " _What is this?"_

Neil spelled it out, and Andrew rolled his eyes again as he counted the deliberate _D-U-C-K-L-I-N-G-S_ on Neil's fingers. " _When have you ever needed to use that word before that you even know it?"_

Neil shrugged, his lips twitching.

 _"_ _I'm not saying that,"_ Andrew added, turning back to Riko and the Foxes that were watching him with silent attentiveness. Him specifically, he realised, at least as much as they did Neil.

When he made no effort to continue, Dan took her cue. Turning towards Riko herself, she folded her own arms and lifted her chin. "I think it's time you left," she said. "We can call security to help you on your way out if you'd like."

"Better do it just in case," Allison said. "Ravens have a track record for lingering where they're not wanted."

"You think you've won this?" the Raven girl said, shooting Riko a glance as she did so. Any continuation died upon her tongue at his face.

Riko didn't respond. He didn't say a word to rebut Neil's claim, nor to push for further explanation. It was a thing of beauty to see him so shaken, the unanswered questions all but spilling from his ears, that Andrew was content to simply watch. Any urge to leapt upon Riko with his fists flying had dwindled to its usual ever-present simmer.

One step backwards was followed by another. Then another. Finally, spitting something in fierce Japanese, Riko turned on his heel and strode around the car to the driver's side. His Ravens and Jean, shooting Neil a low-lying glance as he slunk to one of the back doors, hastily followed. Riko pinned Neil with a single glare over the hood as the rest of his flock disappeared into the car. He managed a growling, "You'll burn yourself if you play with fire, Wesninski. Mark my words, you'll regret crossing me."

Neil didn't reply this time. Not with words and not through Andrew. His slight smile still affixed, he gave only another slow shrug, his stare unblinking and unsettling in its steadiness. How he managed to be so loud in such utter silence Andrew didn't know, but he wasn't surprised. Neil had always been exceptionally competent in the field of antagonism and spite.

The Ravens' car screeched from the parking lot with such speed it left a swirl of dark smears on the bitumen. Allison snorted and Renee shook her head, but Matt laughed, head tossed back as he turned to face the rest of the Foxes. His grin was as wide as the one Dan wore at his side.

"Fucking arrogant prick," he said. His eyes crinkled as he reached a hand for Neil and knuckled his shoulder. "Nice to have you around to grind him to a pulp like he deserves."

"Someone should have filmed it," Nicky said. "Next time Riko comes around, I'm on it."

"I doubt he'll do it again," Kevin said quietly, regarding Neil attentively. "At least not for a while."

"Oh, come on," Nicky said. "This is Riko we're talking about. He probably has a house around the corner somewhere just to crash in when he comes to poke shit at you."

"Don't even suggest such a thing," Dan said with a wince that Andrew didn't believe held even a drop of fear.

"I'll have to buy out every house in the area just in case, then," Allison said, fiddling absently with a single curl. "We can't risk it."

"That you're even offering that…" Dan said.

"I could do it, you know."

"I almost don't doubt it."

"I actually could."

Andrew didn't listen to them as they continued. He barely heard as Nicky's good-humour returned with a vengeance, noticing only absently as Matt butted Neil's shoulder again and Kevin looked at him with the same tentative incredulity he'd worn for weeks. He spared Renee a silent glance as she muttered a quiet prayer for Jean, before nudging himself into motion when Dan finally urged them towards the court with a sweep of her arms.

"As victorious as this moment is," she said, "we have a season to start and freshmen to induct. Come on, you lot."

Andrew followed after them, a step behind as Matt slung his arm around Neil's shoulder and tugged him into his side. He ignored the glance Kevin threw his way as he too followed, and was only aware of Aaron at his other side when they were halfway towards the entrance.

"You spoke for him," he said.

Andrew glanced at him sidelong. He didn't reply and didn't spare him any more than that, but Aaron continued nonetheless.

"Why? And how-? When did you learn…?"

He trailed off, likely reaching his own conclusions that Andrew didn't care to delve into. Aaron was a presence tethered to his side, but nothing more than that. Nothing more than an unyielding promise, regardless of what fantastical possibilities Neil had recently contemplated of team cohesiveness and mending bonds.

 _"_ _You need to fix what you have with him,"_ Neil had said, though to Andrew it had seemed more to himself than to Andrew. He had certainly treated it that way, though as ever Neil's words stuck with him as an unforgettable memory.

As if hearing his thoughts, Neil glanced over his shoulder. He ducked out from beneath Matt's arm as Dan punched in the security code and let them into the stadium, but he didn't wait for Andrew to catch up to him. Instead, with complete blatancy, he gestured to his mouth in an unforgettable and unforgivable sign.

 _Thank you_.

There was feeling in that simple sign. Feeling that Neil somehow conveyed in a glance and little else. Andrew hated it, hated the memories those two words and one sign recalled, but he accepted it nonetheless. It wasn't a given that he would always speak for Neil, nor that Neil would always want him to, but for the moment he could accept the confrontation with Riko as the victory that Dan claimed it was.

Striding out of step of Kevin and Aaron, Andrew left them behind him as he followed Neil to the court.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter! It's a little open-ended (or a lot) but there are just so many different directions that could be taken... I don't know, I kind of like it as it is?  
> Thank you so much to everyone for reading, and for the lovely people who commented. It literally makes my day to hear your thoughts. What do you think? Where could you see it going from here?


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